Heating your tank

LegoZ81 · Sep 14, 2011

Does anyone here use any other method to heat your tank other than a standard resistive type aquarium heater?

For standard home use resistive water heating is VERY inefficient in comparision to heating by air source heat pump (better) or gas fired (best).

My thought it to go with a heat pump made for aquarium use, I just started looking into this so I was wondering what everone thinks.
Here is what I stumbled acrossed, not sure about if it would be more efficent or not yet:
Aqua Logic, Inc. - Heat Pumps

Reef Pets · Sep 14, 2011

Seems like that would be over kill unless you have a huge or commercial size reef. With a 240 gallon reef (stated in your signature) you should be able to use a couple 400W heaters. To be safe, myself I would rather use 5 or 6 150W heaters if you have the room for them. If one or two heaters stick on you will not have to worry about your tank boiling..

LegoZ81 · Sep 14, 2011

when all is said and done I will be approaching 700gallons of water volume with all LED lighting which i think will push up my heating requirements. I agree with multiple smaller heaters for sure, also any heater would be managed by my ACJr and RK2 for no single point in failure, the heaters thermostats would be set to 82 or something out of the way, which is how they are currently managed.

I also keep my house fairly cool in the winter as that is what is comfortable for me 65-65F daytime when home, 55F at night and when I am away.

My goal here is reduction in cost to heat the tank as I fear they are going to be running quite a bit this year.

turbo21 · Sep 14, 2011

I used to use my halides for heaters, but now that i switched to led i have to go the old fashioned way :wink:

bob

LegoZ81 · Sep 14, 2011

turbo21 said:
I used to use my halides for heaters, but now that i switched to led i have to go the old fashioned way :wink:

bob

Same problem here!

LegoZ81 · Jul 16, 2012

so to drag this up from the dead i am thinking about the possibility of doing a DIY solar hot water heater setup and using that to pull heat off of to heat the tank with.
The $1000 Solar Water Heating System

revhtree · Jul 16, 2012

Interesting topic.

LegoZ81 · Jul 16, 2012

over 2 months (1600 hrs) last winter my main submersible heater drank down 1024kWhr at $.10 which is $50 a month, I hope to build this much cheaper than $1000 and control it with my Apex and reuse existing external pumps and a 100gal stock tank, this should dramatically cut down on costs.

I started a thread with my power usage and I'd love to get my usage down more than when I had the old 125 tank setup. right now partly due to heating my power bill was higher this winter than now in usage!

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/re.../91314-electrical-usage-log-since-08-pre.html

LegoZ81 · Jul 16, 2012

Wow, do I get to win something? LOL!

https://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=HOME_ENERGY_YARDSTICK.showGetStarted

TD2K · Jul 20, 2012

I have a feeling this will change once we get the big tank going....

passion4reef · Jul 20, 2012

this all sounds a little too complicated and expensive. what the problem with getting a few jager 300w and heating your water with them.

LegoZ81 · Jul 20, 2012

passion4reef said:
this all sounds a little too complicated and expensive. what the problem with getting a few jager 300w and heating your water with them.

Please see:
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/eq...sion/69649-heating-your-tank.html#post1003752 <-- link to post #8

Poseidon · Jul 20, 2012

A friend of mine had a large system of about 1000 gallons, and he heated it using hot water from his water heater and a hot water rated recirculation pump attached to a controller. When needed hot water would circulate through a length of tubing that was coiled in his sump, and back to his water heater. I thought this was an incredibly simple and effective solution, not counting the controller, I think he had less then $200 in total expenses.

If you wanted to add even more efficient transfer heat from the hot water tank, you could use some 1/4" Titanium tubing!

passion4reef · Jul 20, 2012

now that makes alot more sense. i can justify spending 200$ versus 1000$

LegoZ81 · Jul 20, 2012

It won't be a grand that is due to a bunch of other costs and for a larger system than needed for this. Also I will not need a controller for it as I have one already. This was more of the look at the concept vs a direct plan for tank heating.
I would consider a gas fired option but I have a tankless water heater and it is not feasible to modify it how I've seen others and continue to use it for my water heating needs unfortunately. The best I can tell is I would have to buy a tanked unit and I haven't been able to find a power vented unit small enough for this.

LegoZ81 · Jul 23, 2012

Pressing pause for a bit I need to insulate the sides and backs of my tanks and monitor power usage again for a bit. As it sits I would need to do 2 4'x8' collectors. That should help quantify the amount of waste going on here.

GrouperStupor · Jul 24, 2012

Poseidon said:
A friend of mine had a large system of about 1000 gallons, and he heated it using hot water from his water heater and a hot water rated recirculation pump attached to a controller. When needed hot water would circulate through a length of tubing that was coiled in his sump, and back to his water heater. I thought this was an incredibly simple and effective solution, not counting the controller, I think he had less then $200 in total expenses.

+1 on recirculation pump. I haven't seen one used on an aquarium, but they are great for your regular hot water line. They keep hot/warm water at the ready at all your faucets. They say the pumps use very little power...so it shouldn't come close to negating your savings.

I don't know if running your return through one of the tankless would work or not. interesting though.

**** good idea though to get away from resistive heaters.

LivingSeas · Jul 26, 2012

Poseidon said:
A friend of mine had a large system of about 1000 gallons, and he heated it using hot water from his water heater and a hot water rated recirculation pump attached to a controller. When needed hot water would circulate through a length of tubing that was coiled in his sump, and back to his water heater. I thought this was an incredibly simple and effective solution, not counting the controller, I think he had less then $200 in total expenses.

If you wanted to add even more efficient transfer heat from the hot water tank, you could use some 1/4" Titanium tubing!

Can you talk more about your friends system? Controlling it with a controlller I assume based on temp? What did he use in the sump
to carry the hot water and have efficient transfer? Plastic tubing? Copper coil? Something else? I know copper is bad for reefs.
Did he have to crank up the temp on his hot water tank?

Poseidon · Jul 26, 2012

It really was that simple, controller to turn on the recirc pump. He used PEX tubing, about 25 feet of it in a coil. (his sump was 1100 gallons, yes 1100.)

You could use Ti Tubing for greater transfer, and a lot less of it, but the cost will be high.

No, he did not change the setting on his water heater, it was virtually free heat.