Chillers/refrigeration units for coldwater system.

[deek]

I just reread your post about the 1" acrylic and thought I'd mention something. The Lobster Man (live lobster seller) here has a thick (maybe 3/4") acrylic tank display tank filled with live prawns and the thing was sweating like a cold beer on a hot day. You could barely see into it.

I was going to go the same route until I saw that tank.

About the chitons. Apparently its the radula (rasping tongue) or an urchin's beak that scrapes the acrylic.

The gas between is typically argon or krypton. Krypton allows you to use a smaller (3/8" airspace) but its more expensive. I think you can get away with regular air.

 

[Anonymous]

What was the temp of the prawn tank?
Regular air would fog for sure, no?

Jim

 

[Anonymous]

None of our tanks fog up, but I honestly don't remember if they're acrylic or glass. We have urchins in them , so I bet they're glass. I think if you run your AC to keep the air dry in your house you should be fine. Our room temp is 75 year round.

 

[Anonymous]

Hmmmm...seems like I need to find a way to make glass work. I pretty much decided I was done with acrylic after this last reef tank anyway, but I'm just concerned about condensation. I definitely want to be able to keep chitons, urchins, abalone, etc.

Jim

 

[deek]

I just called them. They said 10C (50F).

BTW. I love the google calculator - type the following in google

10C in F

or

7776 cubic inches in gallons

Its great for doing quick conversions between units.

 

[deek]

Interesting article from the google cache:

THE TEMPERATE REEF TANK
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cach...ence/as11.asp+"temperate+reef+aquarium"&hl=en

"One solution to this annoying problem is to use an aquarium constructed with a half-inch-thick acrylic viewing window. Acrylic acts as an insulator so that the outer surface remains near room temperature. With a glass aquarium, the best method is a double-paned viewing window with an insulating air space..."

Here he's talking about keeping animals at 60-70C so I don't know if that holds for lower temps.

 

[Anonymous]

"Here he's talking about keeping animals at 60-70C"

I assume you meant Fahrenheit

 

[skylsdale]

Bringing this topic back up. JimM, have you found anything yet?

I just picked one of these up last week in a "FREE" pile at a yard sale: https://www2.carolina.com/webapp/wcs/st ... &langId=-1 Mines a bit worse for wear and is missing a pump (and the bottom stand with casters)...but the refrigeration unit still runs like an absolute champ (the coils are actually in the main tank behind the white acrylic partition). Once I get it fixed up, I plan on heading over to the Sound and doing a local tidepool style tank.

 

[Anonymous]

Great find!
This tank will happen, but it's on hold until I move into my next house. Maybe 4 years from now. I don't have the funds to create what I envision right now, nor the space to make it happen, and I want to do it right. For my next project, I opted instead to set up a 120 gallon undulatus tank.
For the coldwater tank, I want surge tanks, which means I need space for them on the other side of a wall, or maybe an attic.

Jim

 

[deek]

Nice catch. I'm jealous.

I'm well on my way with my 33G cold water setup. I bought a 1/4HP Pacific Coast chiller and a MAG9.5 pump to run it. It chilled 25G of water down to 10C in about 2.5 hours. I got lots of condensation so I've put together a double pane setup. I bought a second piece of 6mm glass and stuck some 1/2" thick self-adhesive black foam weatherstipping to it 1/2' from the edge. The foam tape sits inside the black rim on the tank when its put together. Then I put the tank down on its front on top of the new piece of glass and siliconed around the outside. A quick test without the silicone didn't have any condensation on the front double pane at 10C (the sides had thick condenstation).

I also decided to insulate the inside of the tank because I didn't want to aquascape with heavy rocks (images of a 5lb granite rock crashing into the front glass). I siliconed 1" foam beadboard to the inside sides and back and used Great Stuff expanding foam to fill in the gaps and create contours. I've covered it with a coloured sanded grout mix. The MSDS sheet indicated that there's nothing bad in it. It looks pretty good.

So its sitting there waiting for the silicone to cure. I plan on filling it with freshwater in the next week to leach out the alkalinity from the concrete.

When its all finished I'll post some pics.

DK

 

[K]

Just wondering what the temperature range in your area is. I am not sure if you will be collecting your fish / invertebratres locally, because if you are they might be OK without a chiller especially if they are mostly rockpool stuff... just a thought

 

[Mouse]

tis a most Woosome anemonoo

 

[Mouse]

I hope you dont live anywhere too hot Jim, or youll end up with more water on the outside of the tank than the inside.

 

[Fatal Morgana]

Mouse, it is the dew point/humidity (no temperature directly, but related) that will determine that. Having a well-insulated tank wall helps greatly.

 

[Anonymous]

Yep. I'll be using 1" acrylic, or double pained glass.


Jim

 

[Fatal Morgana]

Yep. I'll be using 1" acrylic, or double pained glass.
Jim

That will hurt a bit..., Jim.

 

[Anonymous]

Just wondering what the temperature range in your area is. I am not sure if you will be collecting your fish / invertebratres locally, because if you are they might be OK without a chiller especially if they are mostly rockpool stuff... just a thought

Probably not cold enough, except maybe in the wintertime. The water around here never really gets above 70 or so, and even that's very warm. It probably averages around 55-60 middday at the hottest, and there's no way to duplicate that w/o a chiller around here. A lot of the intertidal stuff goes through incredible temperature swings during the day; I don't know if they could sustain a high temp for long though. Mussels, for instance, can have an internal temp swing from about 40 to 90 degrees F on a sunny day when the water is cold!

 

[tinyreef]

have you tried inquiring on one of marineland's refrigerated lobster/restaurant tanks?

http://marineland.com/products/prod_com ... eafood.asp

i don't know how much they normally cost but i would think you could just use one of the setups they normally put together for a lobster tank.

the sweating would still be an issue tho. i had thought about that coating some hotels use for their mirrors. it leaves one section of the mirror viewable no matter how hot the shower was. hth

 

[Fatal Morgana]

Marineland lobster tank is about $2-4K, depends on spec. It is not cheap. Another issue that you need to consider is that lobster tank need minimum amount of light (heat) and circulation (heat). I never use one, but it will need to work harder if you use it for thing other than lobsters.

 

[K]

Probably not cold enough, except maybe in the wintertime. The water around here never really gets above 70 or so, and even that's very warm. It probably averages around 55-60 middday at the hottest, and there's no way to duplicate that w/o a chiller around here. A lot of the intertidal stuff goes through incredible temperature swings during the day; I don't know if they could sustain a high temp for long though. Mussels, for instance, can have an internal temp swing from about 40 to 90 degrees F on a sunny day when the water is cold!

I was just wondering because my tank has a mix of rockpool stuff plus some other slightly deeper water stuff. The average sea temp here would not go over about 65F(max) in the summer and would drop to under 50 F in winter. The fish in my tank do fine with a greater variation, about 40F in winter to maybe 70F. Obviously you get better weather