Summer Heat and your Reef Tank.
9 June 2008
In the Northeast U.S. the past few days we’re getting our tank cooling methods and techniques tested. I don’t know if this is considered a heat wave, though it’s certainly close. Here a heat wave is three consecutive days over 90°F. In fact, today threatens to break the record of 96° in Boston.
It’s interesting keeping watch on the local message board to see how people are coping with what can be very stressful times for reef tank owners. Those with air conditioning or chillers are of course doing just fine. Others are struggling with temps of 90°+ in their apartments and keeping their tanks cool with clip-on fans and bags of ice.
People with basement sumps are also generally doing just fine as the cold damp basement climate combined with a big sump is enough to keep their whole system cool.
There are two tanks in my mostly finished basement, which has one exposed wall. The tanks with their metal halide lighting have pretty much changed the climate in my basement. I’m forced to run a dehumidifier, which not only dries the air, but warms it as well. The past few days, the temperature has been hovering around 80°F down there. With fans, I’ve been able to keep the tank temperature in check at 79-80° without modifying the light schedule.
Two well-known reef aquarists, Randy Holmes-Farley and Greg Hiller explained their interesting cooling methods, both using cold tap water in DIY chillers to cool their systems.
They run a very long coil of plastic tubing through their large sump, perhaps 250 feet worth, or an entire box from Home Depot. The cold water running through the coil provides a large surface area for transferring heat into the tap water and out of the sump.
The basic setup has the tap water running directly through this tubing and out into the garden to water plants or the lawn. The flow is managed by an on/off solenoid that’s rated for home water pressure, controlled with a temperature controller. Greg runs his water through the additional step of putting it through his RO/DI. He mentions this is risky as he’s adding pressure to the tubing making it susceptible to it breaking and flooding his sump with tap water.
Randy says his system uses approximately 1 gallon per 5 minutes and is generally operating only half of the time.
My own tap water is very cold coming from a deep well. This sounds like a very effective solution if the water consumption is not too high. I do need to worry about taxing my well too much.
It also requires a central sump in order to cool all tanks, which I do not currently have, though I would like to get there some day.
Do you live in a climate that reaches these high temperatures? If so, how do you cope?
