Lighting my 75 gallon

[rgeiersbach]

Hello,

I recently finished setting up my 75 gallon reef tank with PC for a total of 110 watts. For Christmas I got a retro kit with 2X250 MHs. After installing the MH the water temp soared to 85 by the end of the day. After a few days of the water temp being very high I began to notice some of the corals on the higher levels of the tank didn't come out. I removed the MHs and everything has come back to life. Now I want to mount one of the 250 watt MHs to give my tank some extra light, but not enough to cook the entire tank. I want the 250 on the tank so that I can have clams and acros, but I dont wanna overheat the tank, especially in the summers of texas

Does anyone have suggestions on how I can put more light in my tank without needing a chiller for the water?

Thanks

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Fans blowing across the top and across the sump help, similar to a swamp cooler. Will speed evaporation. Put some egg crate across the top to make sure you do not bleach out the corals from the huge increase of LUX.

 

[moortim]

Your corals are suffering from too much sudden light, how long did you have the metal halides on each day? Corals need acclimated to that much light. As far as heat goes, you can turn up the airconditioning for your house, blow some fans across the water, raise the lights higher off the water (how high were they?), or buy a chiller. Some days last summer I just floated a block of ice in my sump but that isn't really a permanent fix.

 

[scytale]

I have an 80 gallon tank with (1) 250 MH and (2) 4' VHO bulbs,

I have an 80mm computer-case cooling fan mounted on each side of my canopy (1 blowing in, 1 blowing out) and they keep my water temp @ 80-81 degrees.

(of course I live in the PNW, so it's a bit cooler here than Texas!)

I've seen alot of people put 4 fans in their canopies (2 fans in the top blowing out, 1 in each side blowing in....)

 

[vwmoneypit]

yep what he said I have a 55 gal 1 250 mh @4 inches from water and a 6 inch fan on low and it will keep the tank @ 77-79 all year with no heater during day I was told that 2 mh in that tank should allow u to have any thing start with three hours aday and increas a hour a day untill

 

[Krish]

Bummer on the heat:doubt: I had the same issue when going from 260w pc's on my 75gal to dual 250w Halides! I hit about 85F myself! I was able to get my temp down to 79F with some fans, but eventually opted for a chiller as well for peace of mind eventhough I continued using the fans. Here's a thread that may give you some ideas. It has pics on what I did in my canopy. In addition, I used a fan on my sump as well. HTH

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21977