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JB - 90P

This could potentially crack the glass, as I see often when people use them below jungle vivariums (warm glass being cooled by water)
I’m also not sure it would heat the entire tank.

What I meant was that you could try wrapping a heat mat around the filter. Probably wouldn't be very efficient, though.
 
What I meant was that you could try wrapping a heat mat around the filter. Probably wouldn't be very efficient, though.
Screenshot 2023-02-28 at 10.29.42.png


walter white enters the room. :lol:
 
This could potentially crack the glass, as I see often when people use them below jungle vivariums (warm glass being cooled by water)
I’m also not sure it would heat the entire tank.
Many years ago I had a 50 gallon aquarium heated by an under tank carbon fibre heat mat. A friend of mine had an even bigger tank heated the same way. We never had any problems.
I’m currently running a 37L and 60L both with heat mats.

 
The tank is going to live in my hallway, it can get to around 15*c if its particularly cold outside. The house is often empty during the day and some evenings so the heating is off. I would like to have fish in this scape so ideally i need to heat and looking to run around 22*c. It's going to be CO2 injected as well so i would like to keep the temperature stable for ph and uptake stability. I have no experience with this but have read temperate can cause havoc with co2 solubility.


The options that i've been exploring are

  1. Heater within the filter, this would require me to chop into the filter...
    This would give a nice neat setup, cheap to replace heater if it fails and no external controller however maintenance would be slightly trickier with the heater in there. ( I would chop a hole in the lid and use a threaded bulkhead fitting with the heater sealed into the fitting with some resin)
    IMG_0192.jpeg IMG_0193.jpeg IMG_0191.jpeg
  2. Filter Jacket - Silicon heater
    I can only seem to find massive ones designed for oil barrels. This would keep the install much tidier with no need to chop the filter and would make maintenance a bit simpler. I would need an external temperature controller though.
    Screenshot 2023-02-28 at 10.29.42.png
  3. Filter matt - -also silicon heater
    I think this is my favourite so far, keeps it really simple for maintenance. i've found a round matt designed for heating vacuum chambers (resins and brewery kinda thing) I would need a temperature controller and not sure if the probe would be better off in the tank or if i could get away with mounting it to the side of the filter. I'm going to message the seller of this one and find out the duty cycle, see if it's suitable for my application.
    Screenshot 2023-02-28 at 10.27.11.png
  4. In tank heater
    I'm actually just swaying this way to save any messing around at this stage. I'm going to use stainless intake / outtake pipes so if i got a 150w titanium heater with external controller it wouldn't look too out of place in the tank.

TBC...
 
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I’m using two of these temperature controllers at the moment. The in-tank probe is tiny so easily hidden.
 
No update on a heater solution yet but I have done a quick flow test with the filter filled with foams and media.
IMG_0443.jpeg
All working well, pump is pretty quiet. Louder than my current biomaster but nothing crazy.

I'm planning on using two discs of foam in this, one course and one fine (both 40mm thick) as well as a big bag of K1 media. I've been weighing up between using matrix or k1 for the media and have opted for the latter as think it'll flow better and do the same job for biological filtration.

IMG_0446.jpeg
IMG_0447.jpeg
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With the filter full of media it took 1min on the dot to fill a 20L bucket, x60 = 1200L ph - The bucket was roughly the same head height as the tank inlet/ outlet will be. so hopefully the only reduction in turnover will be when the filter needs a clean. Time will tell on that one.

The 90p is 166L - 40L for soil and hardscape / 126L Capacity / 1200L ph filter turnover = 9.5 x turnover ph (best case scenario)

Should be plenty of flow
 
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