Glass top, or no top?
 

Ho many of you use glass tops on your tanks? If you do not how do you control the amount of evaporation in your tanks. What is worse in your opinion. Toping up, and scrubbing down?

Just curious as the little bit of salt creep I have is enough to drive a guy nuts.

No tops for me. I have an auto top off system to account for evaporation. I want the light penetration and supposedly better gas exchange with an open top. Also I run 400W lights so heat is an issue.

Home made auto top off or store bought?

Glass tops on all my tanks, but only to protect the lights. Have lots of open areas for evaporation, so I can drip kalk. Prevents all possiblity of water splashing onto the lights. During water change time, wash the tops weekly in tapwater to remove all the splashes.

glass top
 

i have a glass top, i have 3x250 over my main tank (on main floor) and 1x250 in my sump (in basement) and so far heat has not been an issue. pain in the butt to clean but it decreases the evaporation in the main floor area. I am looking to vent air in and out the room in the basement to decrease the humidity down there.

New guy (Harvey) made mine and I run it out of rubbermaid garbage can.

No top.
Have an auto top off/sump system, but it's in hibernation, right now, pending drilling of my tank. (I had issues with the external overflow system so I shut it down).
Still no top, though. I just top off manually every two days, for now.

Cheers,

I always use glass tops, or partial tops. I have measured light penetration, and found it was no problem. :biggrin:

No top for me... I know it would cause heat issues. I just top-off every second day with water.. kind of a pain but oh well

I used to have glass tops on my 75 gal FO tank, but it always overheated in the summer months causing fish losses. Now I just use eggcrate on top, no glass. My lights have an acrylic cover to keep water splashes out, and I use auto top offs to keep up with the evaporation. The reef tank has a kalk reactor for calcium supplement which is a nice bonus effect from the evaporation. The only trouble I have is high humidity in the house during the winter due to the amount of evaporation from the two tanks.