cooling down??

[skiper gre]

Any suggestions on cooling down the water in a tank without purchasing a chiller??? I have a 125 with two m/h double ended 250w in a hood with two 50 cfm fans blowing on the lights with exit vents in the hood. There are also two 48inch atenic lights in the hood. The MH lights are about seven inches from the water. In the sump there are two t-4 pumps they feel pretty warm to the touch. The tank is running at about 85 degrees. Also if the tank is running that warm during the day should I turn up the heater so the temp stays more constant?

 

[daveb]

Two more of those 50 cfm fans blowing across the top of the water should do it. that is how I have it, with almost the same setup, and my tank stays at 82 all day, and all night..
Dave

 

[golfish]

The best bet other then a chiller is to remove the canopy and hang the pendants. Extra fans may also help. 50CFM is kind of low. Is the canopy open back?
Adjusting the heater up might make the tank hotter. You can try it but I'd keep an eye on things. The smaller the temp swing the better but your pushing it big time at 85.
FWIW, I run my tank 79.5-81.5

 

[bang guy]

Point the fans at the water to cool the water. Point the fans at the bulbs only if you want to cool the bulbs.

 

[daveb]

The lights heat the water, no matter how many fans you have blowing on the lights, they still heat the water. Until you blow fans directly across the top of the water, no evaporation (Cooling) will take place, or at least not enough. Before I had fans blowing across the water, my water temp would climb, and my evaporation was less than a gallon a day. Once I pointed the fans to blow ACROSS the top of the water, my water temperature cooled down, and my evaporation increased to over two gallons per day.... With no evaporation, there is no cooling of the water. It is not the heat coming off the lights that is heating the water, it is the light penetrating the water that is heating the water. Blowing fans to cool the light, does not stop the light from heating the water.
Dave

 

[pwnag3!!]

what about adding vents at the top of the canopy?

 

[daveb]

only allows hot air to rise out of the top of the canopy. Hot air is not the problem. LIGHT is heating the water, not the hot air in the canopy. When the LIGHT penetrates the water, it heats the water. The hot air actually will help with evaporation once you have fans blowing across the top of the water. When you have fans blowing across the top of the water causing evaporation, you are in essence, creating an aircondition, which is causing water to evaporate thus cooling the water..
The problem is NOT HOT AIR, the problem is WARM WATER.... they are two different things.
Dave

 

[pwnag3!!]

wait... water and air arent the same?
man i was totally confused.

 

[bang guy]

Cool.

 

[gregm779]

That's why I went with HQI bulbs on my 125 they run so much cooler and use so much less energy and all of my corals have blown up since I put them on.

 

[skiper gre]

Thanks for the info, yesterday (before reading most of your replys) I added another 50 cfm fan in the closed cabinet as an exhaust fan next to the pumps and transformer for the MH that are under the cabinet and put some holes for intake on the back side of the cabinet. I also mounted a 50 CFM fan in the cabinet blowing down into the sump. From reading your posts I thing the fan blowing on the sump will bring me the most help. I have one more fan I will install it in the canopy blowing across the top of the water. The noises the fans make get on my nerves. Any suggestions on quieting them down.
I will give an update with the results. Adding the last fan today.

 

[daveb]

I found that fan noice comes mostly from the vibration where they are connected to the canopy, so what I did was install rubber gromets between the fan and the canopy. A left over from my days aboard a Submarine, THE SILENT SERVICE LMAO LMAO, but it did quiet them down by 2/3rds..
Dave

 

[goinballde]

I saw somewhere that someone made their own chiller out of a small dorm room like refridgerator..He said he used airline piping and ran a bunch of it coiled up in the fridge then used a pump as the return..I'm not sure how great of a idea this is or how it even works..But I do know u can purchase one of these fridges for dirt cheap anymore..

 

[pwnag3!!]

only problem i see with that is no sensor to keep it at a certain range.
I too have thought about this (i have one) but i dont want it to cool too much if something goes wrong,

 

[skiper gre]

The rubber grommet sounds like a good idea, something like an old inner tube. I will have to give that a try. Cool idea a beer fridge next to the tank! Won’t work for me no room where my tank is set up.

 

[daveb]

There is a temperature controller available within the refrigerator. You can put a thermometer in the fridge and just adjust it so that by keeping the fridge at a certain temp, working with heaters and cooling fans etc.. and a good temperature controller in the system that is designed to turn chillers and heaters on and off, the whole thing can be done in any number of ways. Those refriderator DIY chillers actually have more cooling capacity than the inline chillers made for this hobby. The thing is of course that you have to do all the plumbing. The priciple is exactly the same as water coolers for drinking water fountains. You could find an old drinking water fountain, and convert the guts of that to a chiller also. It certainly is not as simple as it sounds, no matter how you go about it. Flow rates thru the CHILLER, and on and off control based on tank temperature are the key. There are many options and apparently, they have all been tried by someone at one time or another. LMAO
Dave

 

[skiper gre]

After lights on most of the day the tank temp is the same as before the fan blowing into the sump and the fan in the cabinet. Looks like I will need to add a chiller. Better safe than sorry I plan on having lots of corals. I will start looking around at the chillers. Thanks for the thoughts and ideas. On the same topic, I have a small mercury thermometer in the sump reading 85 and just added a digital, says on the package it is accurate within 1.5 deg f. it is reading 86.8. Any luck with the digital thermometers? It is much easier to read.
Greg

 

[daveb]

I like most people have been having more problems with stable temps since adding my Metal Halide lights. Before the MH lights my temperature was a constant 82 degrees, with no variation at all. The fans ran most of the time, cooling faster than the water heated up, and the heaters would flicker on and off keeping it at exactly 82. Of course, there was more electricity being used, but my concern was not my electric bill. As a matter of fact, I did not notice it go up if it did.
Now with the Metal Halides, and fine tuning heaters, and fans, my temperature right now fluctuates from 81.7 to 83.9. By late afternoon, after the Metal Halides have been on, the temp peaks at 83.9, the MH goes off then, and within two hours the tank is back down to 82.4 and then slowly by morning when the lights are just getting ready to come on.. The temp is the lowest at 81.7.
I have not noticed any stress on any of my livestock. Every fish and every coral are healthy, eating well, swimming well, and seem to be enjoying their little home I have tried to creat for them. I am not going to stress at this time. When I can either afford it, or come up with some DIY I can afford and make I will add in a CHILLER of some type to try and achieve perfection. I think a two degree swing in the 82 degree range as the one I have is not a big problem at all.
I do have a low temp alarm set to 81.5 degrees, and a high temp alarm set to 84 degrees. If I ever start hearing those go off with any sort of regularity, I will hurry my plans for a cooling device. I am learning patience. ROME was not built in a day, and neither will Dave's Ocean be LMAO
But I do love this hobby... it is the most fascinating hobby I have ever had in my life. Watching that tank grow and change is very enjoyable, and very beautiful to see.
Dave

 

[deeze]

Hey DaveB, what are you useing as an alarm to warn you of the high and low temp? That sounds like a good idea.
Thanks,

 

[something'sfishy]

I've got 4-65 watt PCs on my 55 gal reef. I'm worried that summertime comes here in Los Angeles, it's gonna be hot...I've got no A/C in my house. Should I install fans inside the hood? I also would like to avoid expensive chillers.