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New Member
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Last Login: 9/15/2008 12:13:56 PM
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| I have a 175w mh light on one side and a 250w mh light on the other on a 125 reef.The evaporation off of the tank has made my basement a jungle. Could I take the factory shields off of the lights and replace it with a glass cover?How thick could the glass be before it had an effect on light getting to corals. Thanks, Todd
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Junior Member
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| The bigger issue will be heat trapped in the tank. My bet is it would overheat very quickly. You could buy a dehumidifier but that would really just increase the evaporation rate. Larger tanks just create a lot of humidity as do hotter lighting systems. Whenever the water temperature excedes the ambiant air temp you get evaporation. A chiller set to a temp below the ambiant temp would greatly decrease evaporation but at a cost. Chillers are expensive, use a lot of electricity and put off a fair amount of heat themselves. Personally I just put up with the higher humidity. :)
So many species, so little money!
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New Member
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Last Login: 9/15/2008 12:13:56 PM
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| Thanks for the reply!! I don't think heat will ever be an issue, my sump holds 150 gallons and sits directly on my basement floor. Even in August it's not unusual to see a heater on.Do you still think the glass top will cut down on light transmission?
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Junior Member
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| To some extent yes. Since standard glass isn't really clear (has a green tint) it's going to reduce your light input by some minor amount. (Since glass has a green tint, I wonder what part of the light spectrum is filtered out.....Hmmmmmm). There are lead free glasses that are much more clear (starfire). I would imagine that salt creep accumulating on the glass would cause the greatest loss of light. As long as it was kept clean I can't see it as that big of an issue. But back to the heating potential. I would assume that your 150g sump is open topped as well. Closing up the top of the aquarium isn't going to do have much of an effect if that's the case. Part of what is keeping your system cool to date is its ability to evaporate/disipate heat. If you close up the system (no more evaporation) cold floor or no cold floor, the water temp is going to rise. Again a chiller could be a solution but an expensive one. My tank is a 230g that looses 5g to evaporation daily. The humidity is pulled out of the air by our central AC unit. Evaporated water is replaced by a Liter Meter 3 pump and level sensor run thru a kalkreactor.
So many species, so little money!
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