Questions

[Flounder]

I have a couple of questions that I hope people can answer. First off all how is lighting measured. What I mean is that say I have 600 watts of MH bulbs, and my electric company charges $.09 per watt. Is that measured daily? Hourly? Should I have 600 x $.09= 54 dollars? Per what Day? Month? I am trying to figure how much of my electric bill is fish related. What ballpark are your electric costs? I think I am missing a step somewhere....


Secondly, I dont have a canopy on my tank now. My hand is in there nearly every day cleaning or feeding. Has anyone seen any cool canopys? I dont want to build something that I have to fight to get in the tank. I want to have MH in there, so I cant have it small and t-5ish.
Thanks

[mtfatwork]

do a removable front facing on the canopy, it gives you the most room to play. If you really want to get fancy you can do a pully system for the lights like we did so you can lift the lights up when you want to work in there :). As far as the removable face, we just use industrial strength velcro to hold it in place :)

[hypertech]

Your charge will be per kwh (kilowatt-hour). So, for your example, 600 W = 0.6 kw so for every hour you run that, it will cost you $0.054 at $0.09/kwh.

If you ran them 5 hours per day for 30 days your bill would be $8.10 for that fixture.

[Flounder]

9 cents per kilowatt is better than watt. That has to be what I missed, cause if it were 9 cents per watt....well it is going to be freaking expensive.

suppose you are going to remind me that if I properly design and create my tank that I wont need to get wet everyday...right?

[mtfatwork]

whats the fun in that? :p

[droinablunt]

All I know is that when I got my set-up the electric bill doubled

[hypertech]

I'd believe that in the winter.

[Flounder]

from 60-120? What range? Mine now is about 120-140 pm

[Zibba]

i went from 40-140...but we ran the A/C as well with the hot weather. Also remember you're going to have a whole lot more than just the watts from the lights being calculated in - pumps, fans, skimmer, a/c, etc.

this link may be helpful - http://www.reefcentral.com/calc/tank_elec_calc.php