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Re: cooling down your water
- To: Aquatic Plants Digest <aquatic-plants at actwin_com>
- Subject: Re: cooling down your water
- From: Eric McGlohon <eric at dekard_com>
- Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 11:49:28 -0400
- In-reply-to: <no.id>; from jreiter at bigfoot_com on Tue, May 14, 2002 at 01:43:42PM -0700
- User-agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i
On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 01:43:42PM -0700, Joe Reiter - Bigfoot wrote:
> Get a small fan and blow it directly across the top of the water. That
> rapid airflow right across the waters surface will significantly increase
> the evaporation of the water, which will drop the temperature. The downside
> is that you'll have to top off the water in the tank more often, since you
> are increasing the evaporation so much. A friend of mine was mentioning
> this to me. (Don't know if he still reads this list.) He said that on his
> girlfriend's tank (30 gallons or so?), he took a simple CPU fan from a
> computer and mounted it so that it was blowing across the water surface. He
> said it really made a big difference.
I'd just like to chime in here - Joe is absolutely correct.
Evaporative cooling is very effective. I have a reef tank, and
there temperature is much more of a concern, the lights generally
much more intense and therefore hot. If the temp fluctuates by
more than 5-7 degrees F above normal corals can bleach and die.
I have 2 4" computer fans in my hood, and when they are on they
can keep the tank temperatures 2-4 degrees cooler than the ambient
room temperature. More fans, more cooling. If you have a sump
you could put a really big fan on the water in there.
You will have to top off for loss due to evap (I loose about 1
gallon/day), but you can automate that with a pump and a float
switch, especially if you have room underneath your tank to store
the equipment. Also it can be useful for dosing fertilizers and
such.
Good luck,
-Eric