Drip System Help PLEASE!!!

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bearrock

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 8, 2011
19
0
1
NC
Long story short My goal was to get more stable water parameters due to the lg flux in nitrate and PH changes that have been occurring in bi-weekly water changes with my discus tank. Since my house water is city but my outside faucet water is well I though I would kill two birds with one stone by decreasing my water bill and stabilizing the water with the simple solution of installing a drip system directly from the well......Turned out to be not so simple.......Anyway....

I have all the kinks worked out but one. I am currently running three 300w and one 150w Eheim heaters. When I leave the drip system running my tank temp will eventually drop from 84 to 72before stabilizing and the heaters keep up. I have even coiled about 25ft of the drip hose (really just airline hose) inside the sump with the hopes that would help raise the temp of the well water prior to actually dripping into the sump.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to keep the tank temp up and or increase the temp of the well water before it hits the sump other than adding additional or more expensive heaters? I am kind of hoping I have missed some really stupid simple solution
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I think you're on the right track. I used cold water and coiled over 100 feet of icemaker line in a 5 gallon bucket (heat exchanger) that overflowed out of my sump. It's helped dramatically. I would consider slowing your drip and extending the run of your coil. Google "heat exchanger" for ideas. You could also look at wort chillers made to cool beer before fermenting. You'd have to stay away from copper but it would give you ideas of something you could make. Here's the link to my thread that'll show you what I did.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/12-foot-monster-acrylic-setup.645729/
 
How many gallons per day do you drip?
 
And how many gallons is the tank?
 
A small solar heat collector. That preheats the well water.

Maybe an highly aerated 40 gallon holding tank inside the house.
 
How is 20 GPD lowering the temp at all? You drip ice water? 20 GPD, that's less than 1 gallon per hour, in a 300 gallon tank, and it's affecting the tank temp?
 
The tank is 125gal and the sump is 40 and the drip was originally set at 1gal per hour. At just 1gal per hour (before the additional 300w heater) the tank would drop well within 1hr. I will get an exact measurement of the well water and post it however 50deg would be a safe bet.

Would converting one of the 300W heaters to a modified in-line so that the water from the well was forced to pass directly over the heater yet contained within the inline (kind of a sump within a sump) before exiting (not pump driven) allow for enough of a temp increase to accomplish the same as the additional hose?
 
ragin_cajun said:
How is 20 GPD lowering the temp at all? You drip ice water? 20 GPD, that's less than 1 gallon per hour, in a 300 gallon tank, and it's affecting the tank temp?
Click to expand...
I think we may have gotten our wires crossed. I didn't see a quote and I was the last that described my setup. My temperature doesn't drop a degree in either system.
 
Ahhhhh, I see. OP is dripping 50 degree well water into a 125 Ga tank at 1 Ga/he. Still odd to me, though. Isn't ground temperature like 70 degrees if you go deep enough?

Where I live, tap water is warm no matter the air temp. But it doesn't get real cold here either.
 
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