Hi, just a wonder

Down here in Australia its summer, the aquarium is heated by room temperature for most part of the day so my Aqua One 300Watt Heater’s red light is off. But does it still consume any amount electricity when the light is off or do I need to manually unplug it?

All things that are plugged in weather they are on or no pull electricity, far less but they do still consume.

Hope this helps

lol i leave my heater unplugged for half of the year.

If you dont need a heater then you can unplug it, however you have to remember to plug it back in when things cool down.

A heater that is plugged in but not on will use hardly any electricity, a negligable amount. If i were you i would leave it plugged in all the time

x2 if you have a heater then the temp can drop I assume. if left plugged in it will use a very small amount until needed then it will cut in and heat up. its the heating of the water that use the power. if its on standby very little energy is used. what about night time is it still warm?

Its been bloody uncomfortably hot during nights on the east coast of Aus, and its gona get hotter lol. Beach weather! most excellent. I've done a few experiments to see what the temp of my tank would reach during the night without the heater and its lowest has been 23.9C, I havent seen my heater turn itself on in a few weeks, tank temp is around 26C+.

Johnology wrote:

yea, its been bloody hot here lately, I live in far north N.S.W and tank water has hit 30 at night twice this week, even with the tank rooms blinds closed and the air conditioner set cool. I dont know what to do for the poor fish other than maybe giving them a 25percent waterchange before evening on the hot days, just to drop there temp a bit.

thats what im thinking of doing, it hit 39C today at work and i was in 'climate' controlled shade and green houses working with tissue cultures. Temp would of been in the low 40's in there!

Just got home and my tanks are at 86.4F or 30.4C no heaters. I'm doing a small water change now for my O

It's still getting cold in WA - we were down to 9 degrees last night

With mid 20s in the day my water changes aren't consuming as much electricity as they were a month ago though Looking forward to some warmer weather - then I can complain about it being too hot

w66 wrote:

Just take care the difference in temp after wc isn't too big.
Fish can stand some extreme temps, but are more hurt by sudden changes in temp.
I toyed with the idea of just puttung some frozen cool-box elements into one chamber of my sump, when temps rose above 30oC in my tank.
I believe that would have helped, but i resolved to shuttung down all lights until the worst heat was over.

If you want to bring the temperature down then fill some empty plastic bottles (like 2l coke bottles) with water and freeze them. Put them in your tank, this will bring the temp down slowly

The heater will ONLY go on when the temperature is lower than what the heater is set at.