heater malfunction....aarrgh

[alaskaknucklehead]

man am I glad for my xtra heater... last night the sensor went nuts in my 200w.... dropped almost 6 degrees!! I freeeeeaked! yanked it out and put in my 75w back up, got to the store and convinced em to swap it for a new one... whew seems to be ok now.... I think....
the back up is still in there just in case...
Now heres where I need some help:
my temp was normally 80.5 - 81.5 with my glass cover in place, I added more lights and removed my glass cover, my temp stayed the same, however my evaporation rate almost tripled. Alaska is a very dry/cold in the winter and my house sucks the water out of all 3 of my tanks evap is no biggie in the 2 FW's but......
sorry for ramblin... back to my question, since the tank had a slow ride down to 75 i thought I might just bring it up to 76-77 for now and keep it there. what do you all think? will this reduce my evap any?? and I was also thinking having the tank closer to the 74 degree room temp was a good idea??

[wanareef]

Good thing for backups. I have two 250w (I think or 200w) Ebojagers just for that reason.

I would bring it back up to where you had it before it went out- but slowly. Our inhabitants are from a "tropical" climate and the mid 70's I don't think is tropical temp. Since you mention that your house sucks up the water out of the tanks, I don't think if you kept it that low that it would make a difference. JMO If it get's too hot in there, you can add a fan or fans in the hood- if there is room to help.

Well, we want it to evaporate and top it off with kalkwasser. This helps in the PH swings at night. Are you topping off or have an auto-top off for your tank?

[alaskaknucklehead]

I have been doing them myself, but now, I really need an auto-topper offr
Ive never used kalkwasser.....
what a knucklehead!

[alaskaknucklehead]

I set up my tank based on my LFS where just about everything in it has came from. Turns out that was a big mistake, I need to upgrade all of it! My lights are suspended now that I removed the cover. Temp is now at 77 the lowest low was over 9 hours ago.
Ill go turn her up just a bit more...

[wanareef]

I have a diy kal reactor hooked up to a trash can (food grade of course) that holds my ro/di. There is a float switch in the fuge. When that goes down it turns on a Ph in the trash can which feeds water to the reactor and into the sump.

On the reactor there is a PH that recirculates the kalk/water on a timer once every 6 hrs for 5mins. This is been working for about 14 months now. Just routine maintenance.

The goal is to get an ro/di unit and that will be automated my auto top off- just tired of luggin around 8x 5gal jugs to the LFS and back

[alaskaknucklehead]

nice... ro/di unit is definitly one of my goals, thanks for the info Im gonna have to have some sort of auto top off in place real soon.

[alaskaknucklehead]

oh yeah... temp is at 79 this morn. Im likin that, when my lights come on it should put it at 80 by the end of the day.