Heaters and chiller suggestions..

[Ed Hahn]

This is something I read a while back..

Chillers and Heaters

Providing a stable temperature is extremely important to the creatures residing in your captive ecosystem. Their natural environment, the ocean, has enormous water capacity which changes temperature very gradually. The varieties of life forms we maintain in our systems come from substantially different environments and they adapt to their new home, our aquariums, with a very remarkable tolerance. Rapid fluctuation in the any of the water parameter stresses the inhabitants and can lead to sickness or death.

Unfortunately, even the largest captive ecosystem simply does not have the ability to maintain the same stability as Mother Nature. We need to utilize heaters and chillers to compensate for our lack of volume. There are many factors that impact temperature of our systems, such as room temperature, high intensity light, pumps etc.

Proper sizing of heaters and chillers is based upon the number of degrees that you must compensate for in order to maintain a stable temperature.

Here are some general guidelines:

Heaters: We recommend that you utilize at least 3-5 watts per gallon when heating your aquarium.

Please refer to the chart below for a guideline to correct chiller sizing:

1/5 horsepower = 75-125 gallons
1/4 horsepower = 125-160 gallons
1/3 horsepower = 160-300 gallons
1/2 horsepower = 300-500 gallons
3/4 horsepower = 500-750 gallons
1 horsepower = 750-1400 gallons

Hope this helps,
Ed

 

[bc_slc]

I found this very helpful as well since there are lots of things that go into how hot your tank is likely to be:

http://www.jbjlighting.com/prod_chiller_size.asp

 

[Ed Hahn]

good link, great job.
Ed

 

[randythereefer]

Ed,

I was thinking of getting a chiller and had no idea what size to get. This really helps. You rock!!!

THanks,


Randy

 

[Ed Hahn]

Randy,
Matts thread is pretty cool. You may want to check it out. It may be more accurate.
Ed