Electric Bills and Cannister Filters

[Raggio]

I have a forty Gallon Tank with 5 Discus. I run a cannister filter with two trays of Bio-rings, a box filter with bio-rings, two sponge filters and a 250 watt heater. I notice my electric bill is about $70.00. I will be purchasing a 90 gallon tank and a 65 gallon tank in July. I called Jehmco and they told me Cannister filters are inefficent. They said all I need are sponge filters which only need 15 watts of energy. My ammonia is zero and my fish are healthy. Should I get rid of my cannister filter. I know it is important to keep the ammonia at zero. I do water changes from my tap and I know that makes the water a little cooler and turns the heater on. I actually thought of getting a drum to fill it with water and a heater so I could do larger water changes but would like to keep my electric bill down. So please tell me what filtration system is best. Cannister filters, Sponge filters, or Wet/Dry filters and can you run discus tanks with just Sponge filters and water changes. Thank you.
Sincerely

Ron

[MostlyDiscus]

Are your fish healthy now? If so then my advice would be to leave things be. I do find it intresting that jemco told you what they did. John to me is one of the most honest suppliers I have had the pleasure to have done business with. The expense of keeping your set up is most likely worth it if your disucs are healthy and you consider them pets you are attached to. The cost is relative to each induvidual according to thier budget and set up. Good Luck,Good Discus

[RickMay1]

I agree with Jehmco, especially if you have multiple tanks. In a multi-tank fish room all your filter needs can be taken care of by a single air pump where as if you had a single canister filter for every tank then it stands to reason that it would be more costly. A single DAPHM15 can supply filtration to 15 tanks, at the cost of 15watts, 360watts per day, where as a single Fluval 305 uses 15 watts/h or 225 watts for the same 15 tanks which comes out to 5,400 watts per day. So a single Fluval uses the same power as an air filter that can power 15 tanks.

[kirkp]

I think that you'd find there are many people that use just sponge filters for their tanks. The Hydro V sponge is pretty big and in the right quantity would do a good job. I haven't crunched the numbers but I would bet that a trickle filter is evern more expensive than a cannister filter. They are great for water quality but you have a terrific heat loss plus the cost of the pump. I had a 180 set up once with a trickle filter and the wife was complaining about the electric bill. She asked me if it could be my tank and I said no way. Then I did some calcs and boy was I suprised.

However, I'd question how much you'd actually save by making the change. If you assume the cannister filter uses 15 watts per hour, that's 360 watts per day or 10,800 watts per month. This equates to 10.8 kilowatt hours per month and at $0.09 per kwh is only $.97 per month. Everything on your tank does not represent a very large percentage of the $70 per month.

Kirk

[White Worm]

I find that the canister type filter keeps the water cleaner longer. I was using sponges only previously and its not a bad way to go but you will find yourself doing more water changes to keep algae, particles, waste, etc in check... especially with your current stocking level. I think you will be dissapointed if you were to remove the canister now. I would never go back to sponge only unless I was doing a breeder set up or a fish room full of tanks. But, at that point, I would look into an auto water changing system that made numerous water changes possible very quickly. By the way, I have 2 sponge filters operating in the tank also. The heaters are whats going to kill you on the power bill. Insulate your tanks.