heat

ok its hot here now and my tank with no heater gets up to 85. i can not aford to buy a chiller and it stays hot here for only 2 monthes a year. i think my lights are heating up the tank water. they are sitting right on top of the glass on top of the tank. any thing i can do to cool things down.

 

Do you have any fans? A fan or two blowing across the water (even in the sump) will work wonders. Evaporative cooling can be very effective.

 

ill try the fans. what is evaporate cooling?

 

Part of your problem is the glass top. It keeps heat in the aquarium and is generally not recommended for use on a reef tank for numerous reasons, heat being one of them. Removal of the top, running the a/c and setting up fans should take care of the problem.

 

Yeah fans will help as well as removal of the glass top if your lights are waterproofed pretty well - the endcaps anyway.

I actually started removing my glass top during the day and putting it back on at night to retain heat so there is not a big swing. This is rather easy for me because my light is suspended.

Evaporative cooling is a pretty wild arrangement that gets a lot of contact time between water and cooler air, but as the name implies, there is a heckuva lot of evaporation. I think Craig uses that method. You can find more detail on a computer mod site.. I believe some use that with their computers to keep them cool.

 

Fans are very effective but be ready to topoff daily if not more. I suggest if you are using fans to hookup an autotopoff arrangement with a 5 gallon bucket, a heater so the top off water is the right temperature, and a small pump with a level switch on it that is in the output side of your sump (if you are using one). Adjust the depth of the switch so that the pump goes on when the sump output gets down a couple of inches. Then all you have to do is keep the bucket topped off with pre-buffered RO water. ;D

BTW here is a good place for the switches. Buy a few cause the shipping is the same. http://www.floatswitches.net/floatswitch.html

They are very reasonably priced.

Drew

 

Remove the glass top on your tank. John

 

I had the same problem with a 30g reef in the past. I removed the glass except for the front strip and placed an egg crate over the top and then raised the lights up 3-4" from the water.

 

Heat the top-off? Heck, cool top-off water (added slowly) could go a long way to solving his heat issue! :

 

I have a 25 foot hose hooked up to my RO unit. The unit has a 5 gallon pressure tank so I get 5 gallons pretty fast but then it slows down to a small stream. I just put the water directly into the tank when I top off. I have 2 55 gallon tanks in 1 room so I split the water in the 5 gallon tank between them. I never have heated my topoff water and sometimes I add 1.5 inches in my tanks at a time. I have fish, 4 stars ( 1 lynkia 1 serpent and 2 green brittles)
2 shrime (1 fire the other CBS) and lots of hermits. I also use fans for cooling but never heat the topoff water and haven't lost anything. Wth a 55 gallon tank adding 1 inch of water might bring the temp down 1 degree. To be safe though let the water reach room temp. I am not going to be the one to give advise people to adopt my lazy habits.

They are right, be prepared to be adding water every day.


Jay