Came to a bad realization

saltwaterfishlover

saltwaterfishlover

Active member
well I guess I need to do this so any input will be greatly appreciated

my tank reached 88 degrees today.. threw in some pasta and garlic and made "Spaghetti allo Scoglio" .

ideas for keeping it cool.... just did a water change and added a fan.

what can I do to keep things in a more pleasent range. will be adding 800wt of Mh ina few weeks so even more of an issue...

a) best chiller?
b) cooling alternatives?
c) saltwater ice cubes?
d) run the return line thru the tank on the toilet?

tank stats

120ag rr
versatops (glass cover)
30 gal sump/refugium 1/2 full
1 150 watt heater
mag 1800 return pump
110 wt pc over sump

this over tank
icecap 660 with 4 46.5 vho 110wt ea
sunseeker with 2 46.5 vho 110wt ea

room temp was 76
currently 72

thanks
andy
 
Last edited:
First.......I have to give credit to Tom at Caribbean Forest for this idea. If you need a quick temporary solution (and Cheap). I was told to swap out 2 litre bottles of frozen water in your sump. While 1 bottle is thawing in your sump, one is re-freezing in the freezer. Then when the one in the sump is depleted, swap it with the one currently in the freezer, and so on and so forth, etc, etc......

HTH

Mirski57
 
from the guy with no tank... hahaha...

from the guy with no tank... hahaha...

I read that a very small portable room air-conditioner is cheaper than a chiller (much cheaper).

One guy had his smalll room air-conditioner hooked up to his AquaController so that it turned on and off just as a chiller would be cycled. He had the air-conditioner pointing down at his sump - it wasn't in a window - just sitting inside his tank stand on a couple of 2 X 4's .

Remember, I'm the new guy however - so my input is only stuff that I have read. Take it for what it is worth. Good luck!
Dan
 
rochester NY in april. 88, something else wrong. bad heater or your lights are to close. your variance between room and tank is to large to be other than that. I'm in NE and it raises a bit to the room but not as large as your talking.
 
Yack
lights are 3" above water but 2" above glass (just 6 vho's no halide.
heater is unplugged
only mag18 running and I know I am sorry a rio 2800 runing a spray bar.. to touch both are relatively cool..... tank is still 82 now... better than 88
have fan blowing at sump still..... do you think the glass top could have made that much difference?

weekend was coolish today got warmer in house about 74-76 shouldnt make difference that temp.... maybe evap being stoped by glass is the big thing?
 
loose the GLASS

loose the GLASS

get rid of the glass top that thing makes your tank an oven and also limits your air exchange at the surface of the tank... GET that glass offa there!!!!!!!
 
andy: We have ALL been faced with this dilemma at one point...
I would agree the first thing to do is remove the glass top, ASAP.Evaporative cooling cannot be underestimated. Next- raise the lights farther from the waters surface.Especially the halide. Most sources will tell you the ideal distance is 10"-12" above the water's surface for MH,but every system is different.A chiller is EASILY the most expensive way to go.Use central air or window units before investing in a chiller! The other methods mentioned here by the others will work,as well as straight up ice-cubes in an emergency.Box fans blowing on the long side of an aquarium have a TREMENDOUS impact on bringing down it's temp- especially when the top is open.Even $10 clip-on fans can help.I know somebody that hooked up a temp probe to a controller that would shut down lights and start up fans when the tank reached 85 degrees.My long return line into the basement helps to keep my tanks temp down.Many possibilities to explore. Chillers are the last resort,in my opinion.Find out what works before hooking up that second MH lamp.
 
Gary:

Not to hijack this thread, but I just noticed that you are plumbed to your basement. I've just called a plumber to do the same with my tank. (I'm so psyched. No more bringing buckets of SW from the basement.) Anyway, I've been trying to figure out what kind of return pump to use. The tank is a 90 and the run should be pretty straight from the basement to the tank. We have 14 course basement (pretty deep) but I still want the sump on the floor for the cooling effect (I guess not a total thread hijack). Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Stoli.
 
Actually, I don't know if I'd put it on the basement slab... I've thought of the same thing myself, but decided against doing that for situations in the winter, and at night... that's going to continue to cool the water, and my heater's are going to have to CRANK to keep up with that (I'm imagining...).
Would rather pay the electric in the summer to cool the room (with a dehumidifier), than to heat it year round.

- Mac
 
lets see before tops 2-3 gallons of top off a day after tops less than a gallon... so I guess the tops need to go......theres $40 down the drain...maybe can incorporate them int the hood as splash gaurd.... but not sealing the tank
 
Andy{I don't think you saw this} and Stoli: There is a pic of my sump on my website.It ain't pretty- but it works pretty good.The longer the overflow drain and return lines are,the more cooling effect.The cooling effect can be DRAMATIC.Buckets are OUT.Use PUMPS to do all physical water movement.Even small submersible pumps can be plopped into a 5 gallon pail to lift water!The sump does not have to be directly under the tank in the basement,but it will make the pump more efficient if it is.The cooling effect will be lessened with the shorter 'run',however.I like the sump at eye level because mine doubles as an algae scrubber/refugium.And when company sleeps over,I can still go downstairs late at night with a beer and watch the micro-dramas unfolding while everyone else is fast asleep.My main pump is a Little Giant 4MDQ-SC.All my pumps,sump,etc. used to be in the tank stand.The noise,heat,cramped quarters were too much upstairs.Moving it into the basement was one of the best things I did.I can HIGHLY recommend placing a sump downstairs!
 
would love to put it into the basement... but I dont have one.... am in a second store town home. and below the tank is the neighbors garage... hmmm maybe can sweet talk him? drill holes thru hardwood floor 18" or insulation.... 1.5" drywall.... hmm maybe a small airconditioner mounted in the stand might work..
btw no halide being run yet.... soon I hope...bulbs shoud be here friday.... getting some fans for in the stand today.... took glass off... see what happens... Mac is coming over tonight... maybe get some ideas from him....
 
I did some calculations (below) and this is what I found (excuse the likely errors as my physics skills aren't exactly polished). NOTE: these calculations are based on a 120G reef with an assumed actual water volume of 93G) ---

Conclusion: If the morning temperature of your tank is 78F and at the end of your lighting cycle the temperature is 88F then you added about 8060 kilojoules (kJ) of heat to the tank's water. Based on the heat of vaporization of water you would give off approximately 8190kJ of heat by evaporating one gallon of water. So increasing the evaporation (with fans and removing glass etc.) by 1 gallon per day you would maintain a temperature of 78F. If it only took 5 hours after your lights came on to get to 88F and your lighting cycle is 10 hours long then you would need to increase the evaporation by two gallons per day (assuming that all of your lights came on at once). Note that these gallon values are increases above a baseline evaporation used to compensate for heat from sources other than lights (pumps, etc.).

Calculations: open to scrutiny as the likelihood of error is quite high.

1. Heat given off by evaporation of one gallon of water (heat of vaporization based on 100C as I don't have the values to calculate the true value and it probably wouldn't change the conclusion much anyway) ===>
-heat of vaporization of water at 100C is 40.7kJ/mol
-1 galllon = 3.785 liters
-3.785 liters of pure water at 100C = 3.626KG
-3.626KG of water is 201.22 moles of water (molar mass of H20 is 18.02 grams)
-201.22mol (40.7kJ/mol) = 8189.69 kJ = heat of vaporization of one gallon of pure water

2. How much heat does the water in your tank absorb in order to go from 78F to 88F? This calculation is based only on the water in the tank as I do not know the specific heat of LR and LS other than to say that they are MUCH less than that of water and will be ignored - sorry, I also ignored the difference in specific heat of salt water and pure water as I don't know that value either) ==>
-estimated 93 gallons of actual water in the tank (from a calculator posted on RC that I have a link to, I used 100lbs of LR and 200lbs of LS to get the 93G but this is a very rough estimate because LR can have huge variations in density)
-specific heat of water is 4180 J/KG per degree Celsius
-one degree Celsius is 9/5 degrees F
-So you have about 347KG of water in the tank and you are raising the temp 10F (or 5.56C) then you are adding 8060 KJ of heat.
 
even with coffe and that I used to love and understand physics...

HUH?????

i htink that means I added to much heat for the disipation but.....
you just caused a mental meltdown....
 
How about the simplest approach...

What are you using to take the temperature of the tank. I use 2 separate digital probes from Radio Shack for $9.99 each. If the batteries get low, the temp starts to jump around, so I keep both going to double check.
 
Holy Whitman Boy Genius Batman:

That was one hell of an impressive calculation. When I get home tonight, I'm going to take a look at my college chemistry textbook and try to duplicate them. Even if you're off by a few percent, the general theory is right on and it gives a good thumbnail of determining evaporative cooling needs.

Boy are you into this stuff, or what.
 
Sorry for the confusion

Sorry for the confusion

I never have explained things very well. OK, here goes:

It takes a certain amount of heat from the lights to raise the temperature of your tank by 10F and we can calculate how much heat this is (or at least we can attempt to).

You can cool your tank with evaporation and we can also calculate the amount of heat that you can get rid of with one gallon evaporation.

So for your tank it would take about one gallon of evaporation to lower the temperature about 10F.

Now, if it took your lights the whole lighting cycle to raise the temperature of the water by 10F, then you would need 1 gallon of evaporation per day more than you currently have. If it only takes them half of your lighting cycle to raise the temp 10F then you would need 2 gallons more per day of evaporation...and so forth. Hope this helps.
 
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