idea

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stevestank

New member
I was wondering how some of you have come up with creative ideas to solve heat problems. My 125 got up to 82.4 degrees last night. I'm topless, have a fan on my aquarium and a little fan on my sump. I was thinking of taking flexible tubing and routing it to my cold water supply line in my house above my sump. I'd coil the tubing around the supply line a couple dozen times and pump the water back into my sump. I'm not in the mood to pay several hundred dollars for a chiller and power the thing 8 hours a day to take care of a few degrees. Would my idea work? Have any of you folks tried any tricks of the trade to solve heat problems? Please share.

Steve
 
I was thinking of using external pumps instead of the Oceanrunner 3500. I also have a seio 1500 in my display moving water. I keep my house at 70 degrees. That might be part of the problem. I'll tinker with my programmable thermostat tonight. I have Akron steam heat. It costs 40 bucks a month no matter how warm you keep your house. I can crank it up to 80 degrees and open the windows. That's another idea I had from Scottfarcuz. He wanted to vent his sump to the outside to increase his disolved Oxygen. I thought of running a dryer exhaust vent to my sump and attaching a fan to pull air from the outside. However, that would not work during summer when I need it most.

Anyone have an external pump that will pump 1200 gph at 4 ft head pressure through a scwd?

Steve
 
I dont think that will lower your tank temp that much for the effort it takes. You will need to add another pump most likely to power the loop which will add more heat. You are better off getting a fan to blow across the top of the tank....will take 5-10 degrees off most tanks IME.
 
Thanks for the advice. I took Burgman's advice and lowered the temperature in my abode from 71 to 69 degrees. I took Rizing's advice and got a great deal on a Gen-X PCX70HP external pump that transfers very little heat. Stay tuned for a thread for a OceanRunner 3500 for sale :) I also took Meisen's advice and purchased a small fan to blow across the top of my 125. Honeywell makes a "turbo" fan that is round that pushes a huge amount of air for 11 dollars at Walmart. I placed one of those directly over my sump. Thus far, I got my temperature down to a high of 79.2 (down from a high of 82.7). I figure when my pump arrives I'll be able to get the temp down to a steady 77ish. I also positioned a little computer fan in the back of my tank stand to evacuate the warmth from my 3 250 ballast units. Thanks a lot fellas for the suggestions.
 
I ran 2-pcx 30's for a few months. I was wanting a pressure rated pump to run some 1" penductors. They seemed to drive them well, and being pressure rated the head height didn't seem to slow them down much at all. Only drawbacks they had was a LOT of noise.

If you are going to plumb this to your 30g sump in stand you will probably have to throttle the pump back. If that's the case, and you think you need additional in tank flow penductors might be a good option for you. If you haven't read up on them here is an article that explains a little.

http://www.kthsales.com/website/Misc/hello_salt_water_enthusiasts.htm
 
On your temp thing...69 room temp probably helps for now, but in the summer that will take a LOT of AC. A good fan blowing over as much of the water surface as possible will do wonders.

This is where an aquarium controller really pays off. It will do temp control, and most on the market now will even shut down your lights if things get too far out of hand. To me it's an almost essential pc of equipment...

Keep an eye on your top off set up. Evaporation will go way up with the new fans.
 
Hi,

In the Winter my tank normally stays about 79-80 degrees. with my house thermostat set at 70. In the Summer my tank can get up to the 82-84 range even with the air on. I just raise the light hood every night during the warm months which drops the tank temp a couple of degrees by morning. I have been doing this for three years now with no livestock problems. This Summer I am going to try the fan trick on the sump. The coil loops thing with cool water sounds great but I don't know how practical that is for my setup. The new electonic thermo chillers(no freon) look very promising.

Dave
 
My sump is plumbed through the wall in the laundry room thus noise isn't much of an issue. Are you going to the meeting tonight Scott? I'd like to ask you about these penductors. I'm thinking a 1550 gph pressure rated pump will blow apart my scwd... Penductors might be a nice alternative.
 
I am not really sure. All the instructions really center around the unit's 2 aux plugs which are rated at 15A. So its designed to run the fan and handle a 15A load so I am guessing the fan isn't drawing that much. Not to sound like a representative for Stanley but another cool feature is it is adjustable so you can tilt it up or down to blow on the water surface.

I have to keep mine on setting 2 most of the time as 3 cools too much.
 
that really doesnt make a difference, my house air is 70 right now and my tank wont go above 80 even if i crank up my heater to heat it to 90 a big help is airflow across the tank, i have a central air vent blowing across one side and i have a return vent sucking in air from the other side, a really big help is setting up a dehumidifier by the tank, we have a whole house dehumifier that is hooked up to the ductwork in our house but it is also hooked up with a damper to suck air from our basement, proper humidity in the house makes a HUGE difference in how your house feels, 45-60% is optimal and my house is 70 all over in the winter, 72 in the summer and i have no heat problems with my tank and thats with a hood and 3 175W MH bulbs over the tank
 
Mr stanley tool rep,

Does that thing make much noise? I've been getting by fine on a little 8" clip on fan but I'd like something a little more for this summer.
 
Don't discount the value of the chiller though. It is by and far the most consistent temp control system. And if it is sized properly will only run for 30-45 min once every few hours with a good temp controller. We have tried everything imaginable for our fish room and the chillers just are by and far the most consistent. Fans work fine, except when the humidity gets high. Then the evap rate goes down and so does that cooling effect. We use chillers on everything that has 250 watt or 400 watt MH running with Medusa dual channel temp controllers. Expensive in the beginning, but just can't recommend them engouhg for long term temp reliablity. Especially for a high end system that has lots of money invested in livestock. Get a 4-5 degree temps spike and you may be looking at a tank full of white corals.
 
Josh, On the high setting it does start sounding like a wind tunnel. Its more the noise of air than the fan itself.
 
The current tank of the months temp perameters are from 82-85 deg. Seems to me the most important thing is minimizing temp swing !
Carl
 
I use my aquacontroller 3 to control a fan over my frag tank to help keep the temperature stable. I had issues of my temperatures creeping up to 82.4 as well. I have the fan programmed to come on if the tank goes above 79.4 and it shuts off if it goes below 79.4. With the addition of the fan I am able to maintain 79-80.2 temperatures. I know it can be a challenge to find a good spot for a fan. They can help extensively though.
 
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