Air Pumps And Heaters

[fredbygrace]

Well my list of aquariums is making it difficult to hide my obsession.
So far I have two 29gallon tanks, one 20gallon, three 10gallon, one 5gallon, and two 1gallon tanks set up. within a couple months I hope to set up the two 55gallon tanks in my garage, along with a 30gallon and a couple more 10 gallon tanks.

My question is all those tanks amount to a whole bunch of heaters and air pumps (amongst other things).
What advice do you guys have for helping me cut electric bill costs? Would it cost less to run a couple big air pumps versus several little ones?

The temperature in the room where they all are is probably about 68-70 Fahrenheit in the winter. Would it pay to run an elctric heater in the room so my aquarium heaters don't come on as much, or would that cost just as much?

Any advice on those or other cost saving issues would be great! I've never had so many tanks going and I'm a little worried about the electric bill...

 

[Lateral Line]

2 issues here.

Air pumps work by causing surface movement. It allows gas exchange at the surface. In most setups, airpumps are totally un-necessary. Unless you have specific reasons for running them, turn them off if you wish to save the cost - that said, they use very little power.

Heating a room is efficient if the room is well insulated and closed, i.e. there is not a continual stream of people wandering through doors etc. allowing the space heating to leak out. If the tanks are in a regular room, consider the tanks as radiators. The heat going into them is ultimately leaking out of them into the room, thus the house heating system is not having to supply that heat, so you save on the other side. You are simply moving the heating source from the room radiators to the tanks.

If appearance is not an issue, get hold of some expanded polystyrene tiles and use aquarium silicone to attach these to the back and sides of the tanks, they will insulate the tanks and reduce the heat loss through radiation. I used to do that in my old breeding room.