Cooling Fans: Need A Quick Response

kevin34

kevin34

Active Member
What kind and size cooling fans would you guys reccomend for my canopy? I have a 125g aquarium with 2 250w metal halides, Ice Cap ballasts, and mini lumenarc reflectors. I dont want to spend too much either. I am having the canopy being build very soon so I need to get back to the guy building it with the dimensions of the holes for the fans. I am going to have one fan blowing air into the canopy and one blowing air out. The canopy dimensions are going to be about 72"X18"X19".
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
I'd recommend running 4" fans at half speed. They'll move plenty of air yet at half voltage will be whisper quiet.
Jameco is about the best place I know of to get fans cheap. They even have a fan assortment pack that you can get a handful of different sizes.
If you get (2) 12v 4" fans, and a single 12v power supply, you can connect the two fans in series and they'll get 6v each.
 
kevin34

kevin34

Active Member
Are Aqualight fans good? I found some that are a little over 4 inches but I dont think their speeds are adjustable.
 
dinki

dinki

Member
I haven't had to purchase any fans for my tank yet, but for electronic stuff I always try allelectronic first before jameco/digikey . Allelectronic is usually a good bit cheaper though their selection is not always the greatest.
 
kevin34

kevin34

Active Member
Originally Posted by gman08016
Ice Cap makes 4" with temp sensors that are resonable priced.
I would love to have those but the cheapest ones I found are $60 and I need 2 of them. I think $120 is a little too much for fans.
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
It is. They are ordinary temperature compensated fans, ridiculously marked up.
Compaq used temperature controlled 4" 12VDC fans in their (now well obsolete) Proliant 3000 and 5500 servers. Nidec made them for them, under the TA450 line.
If you go onto that famous site where you bid on stuff, and search for them, you sometimes can get some cheap. Other times, the only sellers are spare parts houses who charge a ton knowing if you have a dead server you'll pay big for them. You may even be able find someone who will GIVE you the entire server ('Ask Craig') as the spare parts often cost but the servers are worthless... you can just yank the fans and throw the rest out (each server has 2-4 of them).
They are Compaq Spare Part number C33211-71A, Nidec PN 930332. DO NOT search for Nidec TA450 or the like. The Nidec TA450 is a model assigned to a huge number of fan types.
 
kevin34

kevin34

Active Member
I found a Zalman 120mm Quiet PC Case Fan. Its the right size, can run at 900rpm or 1800rpm and has a very good price. Would a fan like this be strong enough to cool my canopy? I couldnt find how many volts these fans are.
 
groupergenius

groupergenius

Active Member
Check CFM's also.
I screwed up on my 120 canopy. The fans I got move alot of air..4 x 104cfm. But they sound like a turbo prop airplane when they run. I have them hooked to a temp controller that monitors water temp.
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
Originally Posted by Crazyju
What kind of power supply would you use for the pc fans?
You can use any 12v DC adapter that has sufficient current to run your fans. It's best to buy a little extra power supply headroom.
1amp or 1a = 1000 milliamps or 1000ma.
For example:
(2) 12v fans @ 0.49a (or 490ma), connected in parallel would require about a 1.0 - 1.5a supply (1000-1500ma)
(2) 12v fans @ 0.3a, connected in series to provide half speed would require a 12v, 300-500ma supply.
You can get the power supplies at Radio Shack, but you can get them far cheaper at MCM Electronics, Jameco, All Electronics (props to whoever mentioned that one, I had forgotten about them), Parts Express, etc.
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
Originally Posted by Kevin34
So the Zalman PC fans I was talking about cant just be plugged into an outlet?
Not if they are 12v - you'll need a power supply.
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
Well your canopy I estimate to have a volume of approximately 14 cubic feet.
So if you have 134 total CFM of air flow (assuming you have both fans set up to blow either in or out), you'll have over 9 air exchanges per minute. Even at half speed that's 4.5 exchanges per minute, so that should be plenty.
 
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