Cooling your reef tank
This is another project I was ask to help with. One of our club members had two 4" icecap fans behind his tank, balancing on the tank frame blowing over the top of the water, basically keeping the heat from the MH lighting to a minimum. He asked me if I could make him something that would hold them, and I immediately knew I could make him a cool set of brackets.
After building the first bracket, I realized the second one didn't need to be as elaborate because his overflow box needed a solid black piece of acrylic to block light from pouring in there. That would reduce algae growth issues in there. So here are the pictures. With a little imagination, you can do the same guys. ;)
May 2004: I added some cooling fans to the 55g's canopy finally. Since the water temperature has been reaching 83F and we aren't even in summer yet, I knew it was time to get this done. Over the weekend, I modified the woodwork and reflector to allow for the cooling fans.
These are 24v fans, with a powersupply that can run up to four at a time.
I wanted the fans in the top of the canopy, out of sight. They are removable if necessary by pushing them up from below. These fans are blowing downward into the canopy, and onto the surface of the water.
The canopy flipped open, to see the setup.
A close up of the cooling fan and acrylic bracket I threw together.
In the past 24 hours, I've watched the tank temperature drop nicely, now that I finally got this done. During the heat of the lighting period, the tank was 79F instead of 82-83F.
After putting up with the noise of those 24v fans, I replaced them with 12v fans instead. The new ones came from Fry's Electronics, and while they run more quietly, they also move less air. 31cfm at 25db. A cool feature about these fans is that they come with 4 blue LEDs built in. So I modified the LEDs to point straight down on the reef giving the tank a cool moonlight effect. I can't get a picture because my camera can't pick up that extremely dim lighting.
