Need help cooling my DIY canopy and DIY lights

[Electrobes]

Hey everyone I recently built a canopy and lights for my 45G tall tank. The tank's temperatures are these: the heater is set at 79 degrees, my apartment currently is 69 degrees, and my tank's water is 79 degrees. I am running two 65 watt PC by LoA, and they do get warm, not exactly hot though. I want to run two 80mm fans on each end, in the back, of the canopy having one blow in and the other out. I have one question and one problem. My question is if the fan size and placement is good? My problem is that I do not want another ballast, nor a power supply to power these fans... is there a way to wire these two fans to an ac adaptor so I can just plus them in? thanks!

 

[cj10488]

If its only temp s only at 79f then you are fine where its at.. My tank runs from 80-82 and sometimes even up to 84 during the summer.. 79f should not be a problem at all.. From the reports on temp where most of the livestock comes from the temp is normally like 82-91f

HTH,
James

 

[Electrobes]

yeah but I think its because my apartment is at 68-69 degrees! 8O When my apartment reached 75, my tank hit like 81-82 which worried me as I don't think my valentini puffer nor the macroalgaes (what my tank is based on) can withstand temp fluxes like that, but then again I am still a newb to these macroalgaes...

 

[reefrunner69]

When my apartment reached 75, my tank hit like 81-82 which worried me as I don't think my valentini puffer nor the macroalgaes (what my tank is based on) can withstand temp fluxes like that,

81-82 is fine....use a heater to keep it from falling

 

[justDIY]

if you want to run a fan, for hot summer days when the AC is struggling, go online to a computer store and get the biggest size with the lowest rpm you can find.

if you find a 90 or 100mm fan with an rpm of 1200 @ 12 volts, then you can get a 9 volt power pack to run it even slower ... a small bit of moving air actually goes a long ways.

have one (or both) fans blow out, air will find it's way in naturally.

 

[Electrobes]

but is there an AC adaptor that can run two fans? I didn;t want to have a powersupply in my canopy

 

[justDIY]

yea, an AC to DC adaptor (power pack) that is 500 mA or more will run several of the little 12 volt fans

if you find a cheap source for a low velocity van that runs on 120 volts AC, then you don't need any power pack, just wire it into the black and white wires for your ballast

most of the 120 volt fans are pretty noisey however

 

[Electrobes]

yeah I have a friend who has those and they are way too noisy. Okay cool so I'll just have to find that adapter to support the two fans.. this may sound very newbish but how would I wire it?

 

[brendan]

Not sure if this would help but after reading your post Electrobes I though that the fans that are in you computer's power supply might do the trick. They're really cheap, quiet and move quit a lot of air and I'm pretty sure you could splice them into the power that's already there. You'd have to cut some holes in the back of you DIY hood and then screw them in place.



Hope that's helpful

 

[justDIY]

it's pretty simple to wire them

when you find a power-pack that is 9 to 12 volts, look on it for the polarity diagram

look at this one for the info

you wire your fan's RED or positve wire to the positive connector on the power pack and the BLACK or negative wire to the negative connector on the power pack

look at this pic for that info

 

[Electrobes]

heck why not just cut the tip off and just use the two wires coming from it to attach to the fans? After my finals I am going to go look for two 120mm fans that are low in RPMs (and 12v) so hopeflly around then I will get pics of me building it