heat transfer

[stevieduk]

Hiya, hey I have just been sitting looking at my tanks and an idea just popped into my head. I have a five foot marine tank on the top and another five foot fresh water tropical underneath. it just made me wonder if there would be any saving of power in heating , if I used one of my existing pumps to pump the marine water down and through the fresh water tank then back up to the tank. Where it goes through the freshwater the plastic pipe would go inside copper pipe to act as a heatsink , so as to gain the most heat from the surrounding water . any thoughts as to wether it would work or not. sound feasible in theory. ?????

 

[manbeast]

Hiya, hey I have just been sitting looking at my tanks and an idea just popped into my head. I have a five foot marine tank on the top and another five foot fresh water tropical underneath. it just made me wonder if there would be any saving of power in heating , if I used one of my existing pumps to pump the marine water down and through the fresh water tank then back up to the tank. Where it goes through the freshwater the plastic pipe would go inside copper pipe to act as a heatsink , so as to gain the most heat from the surrounding water . any thoughts as to wether it would work or not. sound feasible in theory. ?????

copper is no good for so many aquarium inhabitants that the risk isn't worth what little savings you might see, plus if you're running a heater on that freshwater tank it would probably end up running full time until it burns out IMO

 

[BallinCrew10]

You could use just plastic tubing instead of the copper. Though as stated I'm not sure how much you're going to save here, essentially your heater is doing twice the work that its not capable of doing. It will most likely just be running 24/7 to keep them both warm. Are both running? Do they not have heaters? Not worth the extra headache IMO

 

[stevieduk]

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yes both tanks have heaters but i was just working on the basis that a large volume of water stays warmer longer than a small volume , so if you had both of them linked heat wise , they would help one another stay warm even though one is salt and one is fresh , just thinking of ways to complicate life

 

[Basslover34]

Well coming from a community of large tank owners... The general rule is.. Cheaper to heat the space than the water... But if this is an idea that you are interested in then perhaps you should look into using a small water heater with a pump... Using pex tubing you run coils through your sumps and you will see a savings however you need to be able to source your parts on the cheap to see a return over any normal period of time, depending on your total volume of water it may or maynot be worth it