heat exchange to living area

salt2o · Aug 25, 2009

It's a toss up between the 250's and the 400's mh's for my 120gallon. I would like to know how much heat is thrown off into the living area and some ways to control this? i dont plan on keeping hard corals simply because they dont appeal to me so i am leaning toward the 250's. how many degrees will this bring the room up? I have a window air conditioner but its not a beast.

jaytizzle · Aug 25, 2009

What are you calling hard corals? SPS and LPS or just SPS? If you aren't keeping SPS, why do MH at all? You could do T5 no problem. If you aren't going to keep LPS, you could get away with PC's too.

gilmour01 · Aug 25, 2009

i dont notice my 2 x 250's in 12x15 room, but i have central air with 2 air returns in my tank room.

cultivatedcoral · Aug 25, 2009

I say go for T-5's. Less heat, less electricity, more color options and you can keep pretty much anything you want.

Sikryd · Aug 25, 2009

I have 4 x 250w's and can't imagine that they would put off enough heat to heat up a room.
I guess it would imagine how small the room is.

roscoe · Aug 25, 2009

I have a open top tank with the canopy suspended about 18'' above the tank. I'm runninf dual 250s and a single 400w and they don't add much if at all heat into my office which is about 200sq ft.

RBursek · Aug 25, 2009

An other consideration with those MH will be heating up your tank water, IMO 400, would be over kill, I run 2 250's on my mixed reef for 3 years all LS is fine. Can give any advice the T 12, since I know nothing about them.

JR's Reef · Aug 25, 2009

I can tell a difference in the summer with 2 250 MH so now Im changing to T5 to help with the heat

Sikryd · Aug 25, 2009

Btw - I went with T-5's at one point, and hated it. The tank looked too "fake" and motionless without the MH shimmer. I just thought I would put that out there since some were recommending it.
I would definetely check someones tank out that has T-5's to see if you like them.