Fans What do they do?

[Eskemo]

what do they fans do in a fish tank 0.0 usually in the hood etc? Are they just to cool down the lights? If so can i use multiple computer fans that i have laying around on a 12v transformer??

 

[aslmx]

They help keep the water cool and keep the humidity down especially if you have halides. I never ran any with LEDs. You need to know what voltage the fans are and if the transformer is the same voltage plus you don't want to put too many on one transformer if the transformer isn't rated for that many amps. I have two on one transformer.

 

[tyler1503]

You can also set them up to blow air across the water surface to help keep temp down during summer. I haven't tried this yet but supposedly it can lower temperature quite efficiently

 

[Eskemo]

I am thinking of adding a few small computer ones since i have a reef 400. and i have a thousand of these fans laying around. i might put a few blowing on the water and a few blewing upwards on the lights since that would be more effecient then blowing the hot air into the tank?

 

[Chris Adams]

Fan is cheap man version of chiller.The evaporation of water increased by fan blowing on top of water helps to reduce the temp. I have a small usb fan on my 38gal and actuall will drop temp up to 4 degrees if left on. Once I got my apex and programed the on and off temps it keep thing in 78 to 78.5 range and also. Also the programming has helped reduce the evaporation because fan no longer runs all the time. Before it ran 24/7 which had a big effect on evaporation.

 

[redfishbluefish]

As you've already seen, fans are very effective in either removing heat (such as from lights), or for cooling water via evaporation. Here is a little unit I put together with scrape 1/2 inch plexiglass using old computer fans. I used it to remove the heat from a T-5 light unit:





[URL=http://s419.photobucket.com/user/psh54/media/IMG_0084.jpg.html][/URL]

 

[Eskemo]

that looks very kneat! i might do the same for mine.