320g build/journey/experiment DIY :-)

[Greenmaster]

WARNING THIS POST IS ABOUT COOLING OF ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS...
aka... boring

Originally Posted by Ron99

Looks like a cool build. I'm would keep a close eye on your LED setup though. Those high wattage LEDS may look nice on paper but they are much more inefficient then good quality 3W LEDs (i.e fewer lumens per watt and more heat per watt). Given the higher heat you will experience with them your cooling may not be up to the task. It's a neat idea but I think you would have to run very cold water through those pipes to make it work. The reason most people use heatsinks and fans is to maximize surface area for heat dissipation and having the fans running air over that large surface area to cool it.
Good luck and I'll be along for the ride now.

Welcome aboard and I hope you enjoy and learn a thing or two... (I'm learning lots... Thanks everyone for your impute)
I realize that they are less efficient but they are still better then MH IMO, Plus the cost per watt and/or per lumen is extremely high on the 3W with only slightly better efficiency. As for cooling water cooling is far superior to air cooling. The water that goes through the pipes will be colder then the air around the tank. If you want to look at cooling performance just look at high end computers... you will learn all the ways to cool a silicon chip. The chips work better and longer if they are kept at cooler temperatures (under 30 to 50 degrees)

1. Ambient air (Silent and uses no extra electricity, but requires a large heatsink and cannot cool very well... used on northbridge southbridge and on some older CPU's/GPU's)
2. Forced air (Often they are loud but they have worked hard on making quieter fans and more efficient designs works well for cooling and is fairly energy efficient, as computer components started to heat up the Ambient cooling was not good enough so they added fans to help move the heated air away and new air could absorb the heat. This is also a limited technology and it can never cool the heatsink colder then the surrounding air and usually about 10-20 degrees higher.)
3. Water cooling (Can be loud or quiet/silent depending on the type/location and type/location of pump. In small scales they are not very efficient but they can get things a lot cooler then forced air. Water cooling is generally setup with water going over a heatsink because water is such a good carrier of heat (in comparison to air) it can often get the heat sink within 5 degrees of the "radiator" you can have the radiator in several different styles generally they use the styles in example 1 or 2 but the radiator can be much larger than most heatsinks and can put in a colder location... like a basement, a fridge/freezer, outside, or just a colder room.
4. Peltier Cooler also known as Thermoelectric Cooling (Silent, Extremely inefficient and not commonly used in stationary applications... Used a lot in mobile electronics and things where space is limited.)
5. Phase Change (Depending on location and size/type can be quite loud. Best at cooling... can get the heatsink down to -40 degrees in ideal conditions. Expensive and not extremely popular for the cooling of electronics. Used in industrial applications, testing facility's and hardcore computer enthusiasts.
6. Liquid Nitrogen... (Silent... Expensive... Dangerous. Used in industrial applications, testing facility's and some hardcore computer enthusiasts with more money then brains)

Using water is far better then trying to do forced air in my application there is too much heat to disperse in this size of an area.

[schroeder]

Originally Posted by snow1

... keeping fish tanks are WAY cooler than having a bike.

Hmmm...
Nope!

[Greenmaster]

Originally Posted by schroeder

Hmmm...
Nope!

+1 (I wish I had a bike... especially with the nice weather we have been having... even with my life insurance my wife still thinks I'm worth more alive then dead ... when she changes her mind she will let me get a bike )

[Greenmaster]

Originally Posted by abcha0s

I love your cover!! - Any chance you have left over materials?

- Brad

Not really I got the mesh from a guy on another forum... was cheep only like 10-15 bucks
http://www.reef2reef.com/forums/f60/...ene-29899.html
with directions here
http://www.reef2reef.com/forums/f30/...ver-29897.html

That's not how I did it though.

[Greenmaster]

YAY! I had 9 people come over yesterday and help me to put my tank on the stand and move it into place we also had 2 beam lifters to get the tank to the proper height so we didn't kill anyone or brake anything (then I would have been killing people...) so the tank is in place and I spent about 2 hours putting the rock in place, the sand and I also put 10" of water in the tank to help me to get the sand into the crevices (it didn't work too well though cause now I can't see where the sand needs to go oh well)
I would have taken some pictures but my batteries died... will post pics this afternoon though (I hope).

PS thanks delo978 for coming and helping. Also thanks to all those who came to help and are following along.

[Greenmaster]

So I have some other pictures of the rock going in... after my brother and a bunch of others helped me move the tank he got out his camera and took some pictures as I was putting the rock in... anyways here is the tank ready for plumbing

The left side



The right side



FTS with the bottom tank in the mix as well.

[Greenmaster]

Some pics that my brother took

[Skimmerking]

looks great man. those angelfish are looking mighty hungry thou.......

[plutoniumJoe]

Looking great! I love the rock work. How are you attaching the rock together?

[Lance]