Condensation on my glass tank cover

background:
I recently added a diy LED strip to my tank and I have two fans blowing down to keep the heatsink cool.

I didn't have a cover, and the fans were blowing directly on my water. As a consequence my evaporation rate more than tripled, I have an ATO but I was going through my 3 gallon reservoir in about two days!

problem:
So I decided to finally add a glass cover to the top to help with my evaporation problem. I had it cut to size and I laid it directly on the inside rim of the tank and it fits nice and snug. Almost immediately I started getting condensation on the glass, and it won't go away. I have huge blobs of water on the underside of the cover that are affecting the light distribution in my tank

question:
So I want to get rid of the blobs of water on the underside of my glass cover. The only thing I can think of is raising the glass up above the rim so that there is room for the evaporating water to escape before condensation. This is a bit of a pain because I would have to build some sort of stand for the glass to sit above the rim of the tank...

Any other ideas??

 

You could have the glass trimmed so that there is a gap on one edge. But I think no matter what you will have condensation, just maybe less if you can get an air gap.

 

I think that you will find that if you have an air gap you will still have the same evaporation as if you didn't have it at all- defeating the purpose of the glass top.

I have a glass top that has lots of condensation too, but I run t5's so the condensation doesn't cause any issues.

 

OR (just thought of this brilliant idea!) you could put the glass top on a slant. This would let the droplets roll down it instead of hanging there distorting your light.

 

Angled glass would cause the light to refract slightly though lol. (doubt it would be enough to matter unless you had a steep angle.)

 

I'd get rid of the glass top and deal with the condensation since that will hurt your gas exchange! there was a thread on here recently about how to minimize it! But i think the gist was to keep your house temp and aquarium temp as close as possible and run a humidifier!

 

A LED strip needs a cooling fan?

Shows what I don't know about them.

I briefly used the glass covers that came with my CL 125long.

I felt the salt creep and spots were taking wome light away, etc.

Haven't used them in many months, and I go thru an average 2G a day, on my 125 with 50g sump.

You could keep esperimenting with some of the options here, Good luck, I'm sure you'll find a happy place.

 

Loose the glass tops and set the fan to blow across the heat sink instead of down on it. The light should be high enough off the top of the water to minimize the evaporation the fan might cause, but being winter you will naturally evaporate more water anyway.