[Skimmerking]

my system costs around 30 bucks a month for my full blown SPS with 3 250's i have a 150 gal too i guess it pays to live in manitoba .568 cent a kilo watt

Originally Posted by skabooya

Sorry I havent been on in a while. I ended up spending my money on bookshelves for my office $1000+ which i really needed. My knees and bum were getting sore from doing paper work on the floor and digging through piles of books and papers stacked up on average 3ft high on the floor.
Anyway I managed to save up enough money to buy some equiptment YAY! and then BOOM the electric bill comes. Did you know that there is a new residential conservation rate? It just started up Oct 1 of this year. Well you can imagine my ****yness when our electric bill went up an extra $100 because of this.
This is an incentive for people to conserve energy and to do this they are going to charge extra for power. So instead of power costing $0.06550 it is now going to cost in total $0.18 on average BUT it will depend. I quote "If you use less than 2260 kWh on a bi-monthly basis you will pay less than under the previous flat rate structure" it goes on to say "The new rate structure provides a price incentive to encourage conservation"
It says on the hydro website if you use more than 1350kWh you will pay 7.21cents/kwh until April 1 2009 at which time this price will go up to 8.21/kwh cents. But if you use less than 1350kWh then you only pay 5.95/kwh cents until April 1, 2009 when the price goes up to 6.35 cents per kwh and this is on top of the rate we are paying now which is a little over 6 cents.
BUT get this there are 2 steps to this Step one charges 0.5980/kwh and step 2 charges 0.07210/kwh so really you are getting charged 3 times. WHY? i have no idea and when i called they couldnt explain it to me either and only told me to wait until they read the meter again in november and re-bill me. I was like WTF?
So in total i am paying 18cents per kWh.
This means the tank I want to set up will now cost PER MONTH:

Heater = 100watts 24/7
Hydor K1 = 3.5watts 24/7
Hydor k2= 4.5watts 24/7
Skimmer = 10watts 24/7
Lights = ~160watts 8hrs

watts/1000 (conversion to kW) then
kW x hours x kWh cost (18 cents in my case) x 31 (days of the month)
Then you get your answer

For me its $127.38/month AND this does not include normal upkeep costs, salt, water, food, etc. This is just for electric.
Before this my 28gal would have cost me about $50/month. I feel sorry for those that have 100+ gal systems WOW!

So now what do i do. Do i still do salt water or do i switch to something else that is cheaper. *sigh* our economy sucks.