When you go to change water, could you leave the seasoned water container(s) upstairs (while you do other things) so that it could warm up to tank temperature?

Watch for some flat styrofoam packing material this gift-giving season. At least put it under your tanks so that not as much cold is conveyed to the tanks from the stands and floor.

It also sounds like your heaters really have to work to keep the tanks warm. With that much temperature differential, there is a danger of thermometers going on the fritz and either quitting or overheating.

Please check the heaters before putting your hands in a tank. If there is the slightest hind of a cracked heater, unplug it and pull it out. If it is cracked, watch out for glass fragments in the gravel.

Ask Santa for some heaters offering 5 watts per gallon, which is probably more powerful than what your have. The submersibles are probably more durable and will shed less heat to the atmosphere.

Do you have an air pump on or near to the floor? If you have an unfinished basement, could you drive a nail into a rafter and hang the airpump in an inexpensive macramé plant hanger. (Saw a gorgeous room of alternating Silent Giant pumps, alternating with plant hangers in a room. The philodendron and other plants actually ran up and down the airlines and cords!) Temperatures near the ceiling can be as much as 4 to 6 degrees F (2-3C) different from near the floor.

If you have a finished basement, would it be a problem to find a stud or something solid in the ceiling and hanging one of those hangers used for lights or plants up there? (I'm up to about two dozen hooks of various sorts in my fishroom. And I miss the old basement fishroom with all that aerial wood.)

If there are basement windows, could they be insulated with the plastic sheets 3-M sells?

I'm really sorry that you are having such a struggle with the basement and the fish. Once in a great while, there is a small "finished" room in a basement. They tend to get filled with TVs and people. However, they are easier and cheaper to heat with one of these electric heaters where the electrical element heats up a reservoir of oil. The whole thing is sealed and safer, though not fool proof, than the open and VERY dangerous old fashioned electric space heaters. The heat through radiating the heat. A small computer fan, maybe attached to the ceiling, can even the heat layers out some in the room.

Do you have some glass or Plexiglas you could tightly cover your tanks with? I think I mentioned some of these ideas in response to "Pregnant guppy not giving birth". There may be one or two other suggestions there.

Those electrical room heaters don't broadcast the static interference on radios that those tank heaters may do, after a bit, when they go on and off. I fear that some radios have been thrown out over the years because of the racket they make when a heater switches on or off.

I'll bet others may have some suggestions for inexpensively winterizing your basement and saving you hassle and minimizing higher electricity and gas bills (which are going to clobber a lot of people, without fish, this year anyway.)