Electrical requirements for 150gal reef tank

[dragoneggs]

Hi All,

I am putting in a new 150gal reef tank and I want to make sure I wire with enough power for lighting, pumps, fans, etc.

I am thinking of adding two 20amp GFI circuits with a 100ft run to my service panel dedicated solely for my tank and its demands. Will this be enough?

Please advise!

Mark

 

[esears]

Hi All,

I am putting in a new 150gal reef tank and I want to make sure I wire with enough power for lighting, pumps, fans, etc.

I am thinking of adding two 20amp GFI circuits with a 100ft run to my service panel dedicated solely for my tank and its demands. Will this be enough?

Please advise!

Mark

Hmm, well I can tell you that I have a 125 system that routinely trips the breakers on a 15 amp circuit breaker with about 1200 watts of MH. So needless to say, we don't run all the lights anymore and changed it to a FOWLR tank.

 

[Scooterman]

Will you be using MH lighting, Chiller, heaters not to mention other pumps & gizmo's? In most cases having two 20 amp circuits are really great but if you even plan larger down the road you may want to consider that also, If you can give your electrician an idea of your power demands worst case he can help size your breakers. You may want to wire for larger breakers down the road.

 

[jsmkmavity]

2 20 amp circuits should be plenty if your not over heating the tank with lites and then having to run a large chiller. 40 amps will run a LOT of equipment and lites for a reef tank. if you listed what you plan to run i could figure what total amperage it would draw.as a side note most people WAY oversize their heaters and this is one thing that could make a difference in total amps as well as type and efficiency of pumps. better to have the right size pump than restrict one thats too big.

 

[dragoneggs]

I am not planning on a chiller however I do plan to go with MH... probably 2 X 250W. This is another question I have for the group.

Good point about oversizing the heater(s). I plan to have two 'small' ones since the MH should do a fair amount of heating. The room is my family room (north facing) which is 15 by 23 with vaulted ceiling and open to kitchen. It is actually my coolest room in the house and gets a bit of draft from the fireplace. I am thinking it is naturally ideal and hopefully should help negate the need for a chiller.

I plan to build some 'very quiet' fans in the hood to cool the water surface.

 

[jsmkmavity]

i have experience with fireplace drafts and yes it can help the temp. the other benefit is you have a fresh air source replenishing the oxygen in the room which can help stabilize ph and is better for you too, as long as soot isnt coming in with it! dual 250 watt mh plus 2 heaters plus pumps will be an EASY load for 2 20 amp circuits. depending on how much pump and other lites 1 circuit would probably be enough but if your adding one anyway then 2 is almost as easy and cheap! if you dont already have the mh check out the info on t-5's. very impressive!

 

[dragoneggs]

Can you recommend some good links for t-5 info?

 

[Scooterman]

On a 150g tank you would probably need more than two 250 mh lamps, depending on the length & depth of the water & depending on what types of corals you'll want to keep. Even running T5 H.O. you still need quite a few to keep the high demanding corals so read up carefully on that. If you can run Arc Fault/ Ground Fault breakers or just the AFCI & run the GFCI outlets would give you even better protection. I like the Arc faults just for the potential reason fluorescent's have been known to catch fire at the end caps, not to mention other equipment. It is very common to use more that one heater & a controller for a more stable temp. & reliability.

Ok http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14453

 

[moortim]

Theoretically at a full 40 amps (120v) you can supply equipment up to 4800 watts. Of course no breaker can (or should) run at or near its limits so do a few calculations (most electrical products have the watt reading listed somewhere on them) and add up all the wattage of everything you think you will ever want to run. If you get over 3000 watts (I just pulled this number out of the air) you may want to rethink your breakers. This is a serious amount of power, IMO you won't have a problem.

Tim

 

[bc_slc]

ask slickdonkey. He just added a secondary panel to run the tank (240gal) and could give you a very good idea of what he would do different

Mat

 

[dragoneggs]

Yeah I am thinking this has to be enough! Running the lights on one circuit and everything else on the other...