The cooling power of fans

I have a 20 gallon planted tank that has 60 watts of Xenon lights (whiter and cooler than Halogen, much cheaper than LED). Initially I had set up a tight fitting lid and covered every crack to help keep the dace from killing themselves. Given the lights and the minimal air exchange, the tank was heating up to 74 f.

I wanted to take advantage of the point-source lights and get some wavelets on the surface to give that "sparkling sunlight" look, and to cool the tank some. I built a taller hood with lots of mesh venting and installed two small 12v fans (one watt each) from an electronics surplus store. These are the like the little fans that are used to cool hot cpu chips. Their effects are subtle and it's not like the water looks disturbed much - the wavelets are only visible through their effect on the light on the tank bottom.

Surprise Bonus: the tank is now down to 62-64 degrees! That's at least 10 degrees lower than before, with the same lights (true, they are higher up) and about 6-8 degrees lower than room temperature.

It does evaporate almost 2 gallons a week. but it's way cheaper than a titanium cooler.

Does anyone have experience with using fans to cool with a wet/dry filter? I'm thinking of trying it on my Pumpkinseed tank, now that I've seen how well it works on the tank surface. The idea would be to blow fresh air through the dripping water part of the filter.

cheers

I'm surprised it cools that much, I thought fans would only cool two or three degrees at most. That's good to know!

Thats awesome...great idea that I think would definately work as long as the air is able to hit the water in a big enough amount for the tank.

Thats awesome...great idea that I think would definately work as long as the air is able to hit the water in a big enough amount for the tank.

Yeah, the problem is that the filter (homemade from ideas I found on the web) is housed in a boxy storage unit that is a tight fix in the sump box, really tight. Wish I'd thought of this before I might have designed a bigger sump. I'm thinking i will try using a tube with a custom flare at the end to "steer" the air into the tight space. I did think of drilling holes in the side of the filter box so that should take care of venting the air.

I'll try it out soon and let you know how well it works.

Cheers