IS YOUR AQUARIUM WASTING MONEY?

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]What is going on everybody? Welcome back to the channel. Uh in today's video I want to talk about the biggest waste of energy we have in this fish house. Uh it's a pretty big problem, but a necessary thing to have in here.

[00:00:10]Uh with the rising cost of energy, I try to do everything as efficiently as possible, but this one thing I haven't really paid too much attention to and uh today we're going to address it. And that is going to be this drip system I run on all of my tanks.

[00:00:27]It's more like a stream, not a drip.

[00:00:30]But uh anyways, if you guys don't know anything about drip systems, you're basically diluting your water. Uh you're constantly adding fresh water and uh overflowing excess water out. Now, the drip system itself flawless. Love it. I don't I don't want to run any tank fresh water without a drip system. Uh and that being because it's just such a time-saver.

[00:00:55]Uh it's a nice backup on them days you don't have time to do a water change. Uh you're not too worried about it. This thing's constantly adding fresh water this tank and just uh gives you peace of mind that your water parameters aren't getting out of control. But for me, I run all of my water through two sediment filters, then a carbon block, and uh straight to the drip system line into the tank. Now, the problem I have with that is the water that comes out of my tap 63°.

[00:01:28]And this is a good day. I'm in Ohio, we're finally getting some uh warm sunny weather and uh the water lines are finally starting to heat up. During the winter, this is closer to like 50°.

[00:01:42]So, now while I'm adding that 60° water, I'm also overflowing almost 82° water. And that is just such a huge waste of energy. I use this pool heat pump to uh heat the water.

[00:02:00]Where is it at? It's at 81 right now.

[00:02:02]So, it is kicked on. It's running. Yeah, and this thing runs all the time.

[00:02:07]On the last couple months, it's cost me $38 to run. So, uh I've already spent money heating this water. Now, I got to spend more money heating this drip system water from 60° to 80°.

[00:02:21]And like I said, that's a good day.

[00:02:23]During the winter, I'm going from 50° to 80°. But, before I go too much into what we're doing today with that drip system, uh let me show you other ways I've been saving on this tank. So, as far as water goes, I have an agricultural meter. What that is is you're using your um water strictly for home usage. It's not going back in the sewer, basically. Like uh gardens, aquaculture, uh people that have farms. I was able to get it through my water uh company being I have an aquaculture going on.

[00:02:55]Basically, I'm farming fish.

[00:02:58]I guess I could say I'm farming stingrays.

[00:03:00]Um and then I was able to get that meter put in. So, if you guys are breeders, that's something I highly recommend. And this is water that doesn't go back down the sewer.

[00:03:09]I run mine through a drain over there.

[00:03:12]And it goes directly into my yard. There is no better water you could possibly fertilize your uh lawn with than than uh some fishy water. All right, next thing.

[00:03:22]Uh as far as electricity goes, I have this whole solar setup.

[00:03:27]Um and 30 kWh worth of batteries. So, it does me pretty well. Like right now, it's charging. The solar panels are kicked on.

[00:03:35]Um so, this has helped tremendously with my electric bill.

[00:03:39]And uh to help bring costs down with that. So, the food costs now for these monster fish, uh I prepare all of it myself in bulk.

[00:03:47]Uh get these freezer bags.

[00:03:49]Break it all down. And uh yeah, bag it individually pounds for these monsters and that saves me a ton of money compared to these prepackaged bags.

[00:04:01]All right, so we've talked a little bit on uh how I save money on electricity, how I save money on water, and how I save money on food.

[00:04:09]My last thing I think I need to address in this tank would be the heating of it. It takes so much energy to heat this thing and I'm just dumping it back down the drain with that drip system. So, what I want to do with this tank is uh create some kind of heat exchanger for that drip system. Um have all the incoming water run through a coil and uh pass over all that outgoing heated water. So, they kind of ex- they'll have a thermal exchange going on and uh even if I can get that temperature up a couple degrees before it drops in that tank, that's a lot less work that my um heat pump has to do to bring that temperature up to 80°.

[00:04:50]Now, how I intend to accomplish this is actually quite simple. All you're going to need is an old tank.

[00:04:57]For me, I'm going to be using this old 20-gallon.

[00:05:00]It's got a big old chip in the frame right here.

[00:05:03]Uh just the plastic itself, the glass is fine.

[00:05:06]But, perfect donor tank for what we're going to be using.

[00:05:10]We are going to need a bulkhead for our drain line out of this and some new drip line. I got 100 ft of this. Um thinking I may double to even triple it just to get more contact time.

[00:05:22]Oh, and last thing I totally forgot about was just a couple old air stones just to have them uh on each side and uh keep this circulated, not let any of the debris settle because this is dirty waste water we're putting in here, uh full of fish poo and nitrates, whatever. So, we don't want it settling uh all in between our coil we're creating here.

[00:05:44]So, this thing's going to be the sole heat exchanger for all the drip systems we're going to have for all the tanks in these rooms. Uh it's going to be the heat exchanger for the 3,000 drip, uh the rack system we're going to have here, the 480, and even the next monster build that's coming against this wall over here.

[00:06:03]So, if the power kicks off, which honestly I hopefully it never should because I have solar and I have grid, um I want it to be able to handle everything that's going to get thrown in here. So, we are going to go with a 2-in bulkhead. That should be plenty of drainage.

[00:06:19]Um so, think about that. Think about what what all is going to come into this tank in the event you lose power. And for me, it's going to be a lot of water, so I'm going to need a lot of drainage. Uh for some of you guys that are just doing small systems like a rack of 10 gallons or something, maybe you could get by with a little bit of a smaller drain, but I don't know. It's only a few bucks more and peace of mind. So, first things first, let's get this tank drilled.

[00:06:49]I like to just get a little cup of water.

[00:06:52]Start out on a 45.

[00:06:55]We are good to go usually.

[00:07:04]Once you get a groove started, start slowly leaning it into it.

[00:07:22]Now we have a full circle and we're just going to keep cleaning it out.

[00:07:36]All right, guys. We are finally through now. Uh I'm going to clean this up and we will get this sump in place and start plumbing everything up. So, lately I've been getting in the habit of just putting a bead of silicone around this bulkhead seal.

[00:07:48]Um I've seen some people say "Why would you do that? It defeats the whole purpose of having a seal in the bulkhead."

[00:07:59]But I've just been having way too many issues lately with bulkheads and when I do this I have never have to worry about them.

[00:08:11]Uh I know some people say "Oh, that defeats the whole purpose of having the seal on the bulkhead.

[00:08:19]You're relying on the silicone now instead of the seal on it."

[00:08:27]I'm not going to argue with that. You're right. We are using the silicone as a seal now.

[00:08:32]But that other seal still acts as almost like a cushion for the hard plastic.

[00:08:37]And um really I don't have a problem with using silicone as a seal cuz look at the tank itself. The whole tank uses silicone as a seal. So, clearly it's a very good sealer.

[00:08:50]Some tanks like this 400 gallon, it's been almost 2 years running and uh perfectly fine. No issues with the bulkheads. Um I even moved this thing back and forth from this area like three times, bang the plumbing around, never had an issue with leaking. I recently set up some other glass tanks, didn't use the silicone around it. Uh leak like crazy. Brand new tanks.

[00:09:14]Uh had to cut everything out.

[00:09:17]Put that put that bead of silicone in and uh plumb everything back up. Pain in the butt.

[00:09:23]I just come and do this the first time now. Silicone grade or it's aquarium grade.

[00:09:29]But I don't have to worry about any chemicals, nothing like that. Anyways, enough rambling on. Back to the project.

[00:09:36]So, I got this thing set up in the corner over here. Um eventually, I'd like it to go behind the tank, but this is where it's going to sit for right now.

[00:09:44]Uh I just got it 90'd right into that drain that goes outside into the yard.

[00:09:51]And uh yeah, it's as simple as that. Having a source to drain it to. So, uh let's get the coil in here and uh get this thing filled up. See how it uh how good it is at actually exchanging heat. All right, I got one of these cheap airstones I'm going to put in here just to keep all that fish debris circulating and not let it settle in the coils cuz the whole point is to still be able to get rid of dirty water.

[00:10:18]Let's get this coil in here.

[00:10:21]I need to run a 10 ft of it to the backside of this tank. So, I just connected the end of this coil to the pre-existing drip line and uh it's going to help me pull it through the crack on that side of the tank.

[00:10:38]All right, we are good to go.

[00:10:41]I'm going to hook it to this 90 I got, and now all of our drip will go through that heat exchanger out there first before it comes back to any of these tanks.

[00:10:53]Okay, now I have my water source tapped into the coil. Now, I need to send the coil back to the tank and uh I got some uh some extra tubing right here.

[00:11:06]I'm just going to put a coupler on there and send it back to our little drip system.

[00:11:16]All right, so I've just got this thing teed right here. This is our coil side.

[00:11:20]This goes to the 3,000-gallon sump.

[00:11:23]And then this last tee is for it's not hooked up yet, but it's for me to run the drip line all the way over to the 480. So, I just put a T in there cuz I know I'd need one eventually.

[00:11:36]Uh ideally long-term, I would like it to be back here in this corner. Uh I think it'd look 1,000 times better not out in the open, but I guess today I'm just looking for functionality and uh start cutting some costs on uh heating this bad boy. Uh if any of you guys have been following the channel for a while, you know I've talked about wanting to redo this filtration for the 3,000. I want to add a second drum filter right here.

[00:12:03]I want to take the sump off that base.

[00:12:07]Uh let it sit a bit lower on the ground so we have more room with these pipes right here, our return lines or our drain lines.

[00:12:16]But yeah, back here's just a work in progress, so we're getting to it slowly but surely.

[00:12:23]Pups are doing great.

[00:12:26]More on the way soon in a couple weeks.

[00:12:28]I can't wait to show you guys.

[00:12:31]But as far as functionality, we should be pretty pretty solid, good to go.

[00:12:36]Um Put this air stone in between the center of this coil.

[00:12:42]Uh that air stone is going to do two things, uh circle the debris up and uh keep uh refreshing new incoming water down towards that coil.

[00:12:52]Uh cuz I don't want like the bottom of the tank to be cold and then the top all the heat heated water coming in just sits and goes right out. So, that's going to help circulate it, uh keep this thing clean.

[00:13:04]But anyways, uh I got the return right there for the 3,000 angled. It's kind of laying on the ground right now.

[00:13:13]I'm going to get a pipe strap, attach it right here, and dump it right in this bad boy, and we should be ready to go.

[00:13:20]Uh also, a lid.

[00:13:23]So, so I'll that pipe up, and then put a lid and start filling this bad boy.

[00:13:29]So, this is what we ended up with guys.

[00:13:32]It's not the prettiest, but I'm hoping it functions well. We'll figure out very soon here. Uh last but not least one of those little handles.

[00:13:43]I got like a 50 pack of these off of Amazon for like 10 bucks and they're super nice for these do-it-yourself lids. Especially if you can get a really tight seal around them.

[00:13:52]You almost have to like pop them in and out. And yeah, these help really well cuz you don't have to sit there and fight with it.

[00:14:01]I am going to turn the drip system back on this tank and we will slowly start filling this exchanger up.

[00:14:10]So, this thing's been running for a few hours now and check this out. I'm extremely impressed with it. I got to be honest.

[00:14:20]The water in here is 71°.

[00:14:29]The water in the tank 82.

[00:14:32]I did put some baby stingrays in here.

[00:14:35]Uh just to double-check it.

[00:14:39]Tank 81.

[00:14:41]I don't know. Pump says 82 over there, but this says 81.3, so let's fill Let's fill a cup up in this.

[00:15:17]Let's see what we got off straight out of the drip.

[00:15:22]72° you guys.

[00:15:26]That is quite impressive.

[00:15:28]Uh compared to where I started this morning, that's a 10° difference.

[00:15:34]And just to kind of reinforce what I was uh showing you guys earlier. I know I grabbed it directly from the tap when I was measuring the initial water, but this comes straight off the filtration our pre-filtration our treated water and go straight down and around to our drip line and to our coil.

[00:15:54]This is the water coming right off of it.

[00:16:01]And uh let's measure how cold this is.

[00:16:11]58° you guys.

[00:16:13]So, what is that? Like a 14° difference at this point? Um huge improvement. Huge, huge, huge. Uh I I just kind of wanted to show you guys uh this isn't some kind of gimmick. This is truly a cheap do-it-yourself heat exchanger.

[00:16:34]All right, you guys. So, this is a perfect do-it-yourself friendly heat exchanger. I highly recommend any of you guys with larger systems, or I guess even smaller systems if you got room underneath your stand to incorporate one of these.

[00:16:46]Definitely use the drip system. It is just such a peace of mind thing to have.

[00:16:51]Um even if you're like uh pre-filling a barrel with specific pH and TDS and stuff like that, some kind of drip is amazing to have on your system. And I know some of you might be questioning uh what happens when you add that tank and these rack systems we're getting ready to build and all these tanks um same deal. Uh anything we're dumping in, we're dumping just as much out. So, it is constantly going to be touching new hot water and uh doing that thermal transfer. I might even, because we're going to be dripping, running more through this coil quicker.

[00:17:31]As I add more systems, I'll probably just build a bigger coil. Probably put another 100 ft to 200 ft in there. Uh just so it has more contact time in this sump to do that thermal transfer.

[00:17:44]So, I'm already happy now, you guys. Uh This tank is extremely energy efficient now at this point. I've pretty much uh checked off every box in terms of how efficient I can be with this thing. Uh The only thing left to do with it now is wrap the outside of this thing, make it look pretty, and uh add some more monsters. So, I hope some of you guys found some inspiration in this video and uh enjoyed what I did. And uh if you like this, please like, comment, subscribe, and I will see you guys in the next one.