Jacob’s Blog

I need some fresh air!

Salt water aquariums tend to evaporate water quickly due to the constant water movement, warm water temperature, and large surface area exposed to the air. In my experience it’s not unusual to evaporate 1-2% of the total water volume per day.

My system will be about 400 gallons total water volume including the sump) which equates to about 6 gallons of evaporation every day. That’s over 2100 gallons a year of evaporated water. In order to remove all the moist air I decided to build an air exchange system. It’s fairly simple:

1. Make the stand and canopy as air tight as possible.
2. Using ducting create a loop from outside the house, through the stand and canopy, and back out of the house.
3. On the outlet side of the loop install an inline fan to pull fresh air through the loop.

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Pushing Forward

It’s been too long since I’ve updated so here’s the latest. When setting up an aquarium in your office it does help to actually have the tank IN the office… not outside next to the garage. With the help of some friends the tank is now inside! Prior to moving it in I spent 2 weekends polishing out the scuffs and scratches from the previous 6 years that the tank was set up. I used a Micromesh HP-100 kit. This is a hand sanding process that takes a lot of time, I don’t think I’ll ever do it again (at least not on a large tank) but the results are to my liking.

Tank In The Office

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