I have a separate thread over in the Lighting forum about setting up 60 LED's on my 135g planted tank http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/lighting/59475-one-more-diy-led-thread.html, but I want to take a chunk of it and discuss a different topic here: using the heat generated by the 60 LED's (which will be substantial) to directly or indirectly heat the aquarium supplementing 600W of heaters.
I'm thinking that attaching the LED's to a square titanium, stainless steel or aluminum tube in my full canopy would improve the heatsink capabilities by water-cooling. The 135g tank is kept at 83 degrees for Discus and Angelfish, and the water is filtered through a central trickle system in the basement along with several 20g breeding tanks (the basement is generally 60 degrees, which causes a lot of heat loss in a trickle system). 10% of the water is replaced daily with RO water at 55 degrees also (dripped in with a water-changing system).
Has anyone ever experimented with using the heat produced by lighting to heat the tank? If so, what were your results?
I'm thinking of a closed-system (for safety of water near electrical). I could either directly use the water that passes through the pipe at the sump (direct use), or run it through a coil to transfer the heat (indirect use).
I'll post progress on this as it moves along (pictures, etc) if anyone expresses interest, but right now I'm looking for anyone's experience or experiments - especially if it involves the control/monitoring of such a system.
Please be aware that I'm not envisioning any moves of the filtration system, changes to the filtration type, changing the temperature, etc., so any posts suggesting those are wasted efforts.
I'm thinking that attaching the LED's to a square titanium, stainless steel or aluminum tube in my full canopy would improve the heatsink capabilities by water-cooling. The 135g tank is kept at 83 degrees for Discus and Angelfish, and the water is filtered through a central trickle system in the basement along with several 20g breeding tanks (the basement is generally 60 degrees, which causes a lot of heat loss in a trickle system). 10% of the water is replaced daily with RO water at 55 degrees also (dripped in with a water-changing system).
Has anyone ever experimented with using the heat produced by lighting to heat the tank? If so, what were your results?
I'm thinking of a closed-system (for safety of water near electrical). I could either directly use the water that passes through the pipe at the sump (direct use), or run it through a coil to transfer the heat (indirect use).
I'll post progress on this as it moves along (pictures, etc) if anyone expresses interest, but right now I'm looking for anyone's experience or experiments - especially if it involves the control/monitoring of such a system.
Please be aware that I'm not envisioning any moves of the filtration system, changes to the filtration type, changing the temperature, etc., so any posts suggesting those are wasted efforts.