Condensation/evaporaton, how do you guys deal with it?

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Tokis-Phoenix

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 9, 2007
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Somerset, England
I would like to build one or two indoor ponds in a couple of years time, and have started my research pretty early.
One thing though i can't seem to find much helpful info on is how people deal with the problem of condensation and evoporation with indoor ponds though?
One of my fears would be that all the evaporation from an indoor pond would condensate on the electrics like the plugs for the filters and lights etc and cause them to mess up.
 
I have a 600 gallon tank with two 100 gallon sumps and when it was salt water I also had a 300 gallon refugium all in a 14 x 14 foot room. Humidity was a BIG problem fur sure. I used a dehumidifier and also had to A/C the room to keep it cool to controll the water temp as a chiller for this big of a tank was much more expensive than the A/C unit. Also a Chiller would heat the room and be counter productive. In the winter the dehumidifier worked perfectly in the room as it would easily handle the moisture and would also heat the room to keep it from getting too cold. The A/C would still need to run in the day but that was because of the MH lighting I had.

Now, I will say that Fresh water should not be a problem with large dehumidifiers and they should last years but when my tank was a large salt reef, the salt in the air destroyed two seperate A/C units and my dehumidifier quickly. Salt crystalized in all three units and quickly coroded everything and they all failed at about the same time and I came home to a dead mess one day with the water temt soaring up to 98 degrees in the matter of hours. That is what 2000 wats of metalhalide lights will do.

I am now running a fresh water tank. I have a new 70 pint Dehumidifier and working on a new A/C unit and don't expect any problems since I don't have the salt to cause problems in the future.

Keep in mind, if you don't have good ventilation and no A/C then you will get quite warm as a dehumidifier will give off heat.

Another good solution is to use a air to air heat exchanger and vent that humid air out side if possible. The heat exchanger will put the heat/ cool from the outgoing air back into the incomming air using a counter current heat exchange. This will give you fresh dry air and conserve some of the cool or heat you had in your room. I don't have this system but my HVAC friend is looking for me as an option for my fish room.

Good luck.
 
Tokis-Phoenix;1098768; said:
You sure something like that would be able to cope with a large indoor pond like a 12x6x3ft pond?
Click to expand...



My best solution for humidity is to cover the pond. Many ways to do this but if you can fabricate up a cover 80% of your problem will be solved. A humidifier will work ok but will be running all the time. I'm in the process of building a 1/2" pvc frame that I will try to attach some clear plastic to. It will hinge in the middle for easy viewing/feeding and should limit most of the evaporation.




bob
 
Thanks for all the info everyone, i really appreiciate it :thumbsup: . I would like to keep the ponds open and not covered, so i will probably head down the de-humidifier route.
I'm thinking/planning of doing 1 or 2 indoor ponds in the future a couple of years down the line, there will definately be one pond for primarily large adopted tankbusting catfishes and perhaps one more smaller pond for fish more around the 1-2ft long and smaller range, like bala sharks and clown loaches etc :) .
 
If you insulate your room and heat the room (reverse cycle air, gas heater, electric column etc) instead of just heating the pond you will get less condensation in your room. Relative air humidity may be the same? but less droplets of water on outside of pool, windows, etc. If you heat the pond only your just indirectly heating the room anyway IMO.
 
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