120 gallon journal - picture Feb 27

[Ruth]

400W lights are hot - there is just no way around it. I run 3X400W lights on 2 of my tanks and am always battleing heat. I am going to put a chiller on my 190g next summer as this tank is acrylic and no matter what I do it get's too hot. If you basement is already hot and muggy what you may want to do is to figure out some kind of ventilation or you will probably be dealing with mould at some point in the future.
On my 230g tank that is glass I can control the heat with fans blowing across the sump but it is just not enought on the acrylic tank.

[kwirky]

Originally Posted by Psuedo

If you build yourself a self contained hood and install 2- 4inch fans on them this will dissipate most of the heat generated by the lights.

yeah, I'll try that for the winter coming up and if it's getting too hot in the summer, I'll have cash then to get the chiller.

Originally Posted by Ruth

If you basement is already hot and muggy what you may want to do is to figure out some kind of ventilation or you will probably be dealing with mould at some point in the future.

The basement's not already muggy and hot. I meant when the 120 gallon tank I have was being run with a completely open top, THEN it was muggy in the basement. the basement's actually quite cool and dry normally. I WAS thinking of a way to vent air from the hood straight to the furnace room on the other side of the wall and tapped into the chimney piping. It would be hot air, so it should rise, right? Anyone think this would be a problem?

Originally Posted by Psuedo

You might want to get another breaker installed just for your aquarium if power overload is a problem in the basement

An electrician was by a few months ago to fix some of the "do it yourself" wiring the previous owners did, and installed another breaker. We stopped using the base heaters before then, so I don't know . Maybe I should get out a couple blow dryers, and turn on two irons to test the maximum capacity?

[danny zubot]

I just need to know if the 400 watts would be too hot.

I run a single 400 watt on my 65 gallon tank and it heats up pretty good in the summer, due to ambient room temp. If your basement is cool though, I'd go for it. 2 400 watters should do fine, with fans of course.

I haven't read the whole thread so sorry if this was brought up already. Your nano tank would make a really nice refugium or frag tank, why don't you plumb it in?

[Ruth]

The other thing to consider is that you said you basement was muggy until you covered your tank. The thing with putting the 400W bulbs over your tank is that the covered top is going to contribute further to heat in the tank. I know that I run both my large systems with open tops and as I said still have heat issues in my 190g even with the top open and fans blowing accross both the sump and the tank. I can't even imagine how hot this tank would get if I put the cover on.

[AJ_77]

you'll need some venting in that room, even though it is in the basement - dual 400's can be pretty hot yes, but people have gotten around that problem. I think Brad runs 400 Radiums on m59's, and over a 75 gallon.

you could also suspend the canopy for a bit of help with airflow:



that's 2 - 400W over a 110, with a stand fan on "low" blowing across the tank top. it stayed pretty cool, in the basement.

[danny zubot]

Hey I remember that tank.

[Midknight]

Now it is not saying that you can't run both types of tanks.
Each has their own merits as well as challenges.
I have a 10g nano in the bathroom and a 33 that I am upgrading to a 75 later this year.

[kwirky]

I finally got around to setting up the moonlight. It's a cold cathode light, and I decided to run it on the side of the tank, since it gives a different look than the usual middle of the tank.

I posted how I made it in the DIY section http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=27340

[kwirky]

ok so I bought more stuff! woot!

I added two seio 1100's, totaling my water movement to aproximately 4000gph. that's 33 x of tank turnover haha. Everything seemed to perk up almost instantly when I added the extra 2200gph. I've got the powerheads arranged to prevent the deadspots I had before while not giving my softies/lps a thrashing. The clowns are definately enjoying the extra water movement

I also added another 10 lbs of liverock. Albert was nice enough to sell me some from a display tank, too, since there was slim pickings of rock left today. Total liverock is about 100lbs. Need more still. I stacked the rock I bought in the back lefthand corner, allowing open spaces for water movement.

And I did my own DIY auto-top off system. I bought a cheap 5.5 gallon water tank from ukranian tire, and hooked it up to a low output AC airpump run on a digital timer. It's set to pump water out for 5 minutes when the 10k's turn out at 10pm (ph starts dropping then), and another 5 minutes at about 3am. Total output then is 1.8 gallons per day. I was paying attention to my daily evaporation for a while, and normally have about 2.0-2.1 gallons of evaporation per day. It's a pretty good system, I think. Eventually I'll convert it to a 5 gallon glass jug to deal with the jug expanding/contracting when the air pump turns on and off. And I'd like to get a digital timer with more daily on-off's if I come across one for a good price. Spread out the dosing.

Upgraded some more test kits to salifert and aquatest kits. My aquarium pharmeceuticals kit was reading 330ppm calcium, but my new salifert kit reads 390ppm. Good thing I got the new one, I was about to make corrective action today. Also bought a good pH kit to see if my milwaukee monitor is still reading accurately, and it is. 8.3pH while the lights are full blast.

So here are some pictures. Don't mind the cloudy water, I just finished basting the rocks before the photos.


Campwasser dosing bottle. Hehe, get it? lol I'm lame


Under my tank. Don't mind the mess.


as of Nov 15, 2006

[kwirky]

so i fragged some of the branches off the leather coral. 10 in total. I'll see how they do in the next week.

Also got some chaeto for the fuge. We'll see how that does. It's in the slow moving area of the fuge.

And I bought some kent turbo calcium to fix my calcium/alkalinity imbalance. littlesilvermax has some calcium chloride on the way, so thankfully it won't be expensive to maintain. I'm in the process of baking baking soda ATM.

Oh, and I got an urchin, and I wish I got more, it's so damned cool