scapone Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 I have a ten gallon tank with 96w power quads 3" off the top of the tank with no glass canopy. I bought a kent aqua dose 2.5 gallon so I can top off my tank automatically. If Im dripping water into the tank from this jug how many seconds between each drip should I have it dripping the top off water into the tank to compensate for evaporation? Link to comment
schaferfred Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 I would have to believe that there would be no set interval between drips because there are to many factors that would make up for your evaporation rate, like everyones home has a different humidity level which should be the biggest factor of evaporation. I think you'll just have to experiment with what would work best. Link to comment
Korbin Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 Measure the amount of water that evaporates in 24 hours. Divide by 1440. That gives you the amount of water that evaporates in a minute. Set your dripping device to drip that much in one minute. Link to comment
offsprg01 Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 yea korbin!much thanks i've been wondering the same freaking thing but could figure out the math. WOOT WOOT! 24hrs *60hrs = 1440 minutes! multiply that by 60secons and you get 86400 seconds. divide the total evp loss per day by 86400 seconds and then you have the number od drop per second. woot woot. yes! *armed with way to much knoledge offsprg goes off to test this new theory shurly to find only much dismay at the fact that in theory it should work, but no matter how many times he should try old man murphy shall biatch slap his punk @$$* Link to comment
EtOH_is_good Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 are evap rates dependent on ambient temp and humidity? if either are fluctuating then it'll be more than just that linear algebra. may even need some calculus (the horror!!!). Link to comment
onthefly Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 Ah yes....and don't forget the the volume of a drop of water changes everytime to add a buffer, kalk, or any other solute to it...... Link to comment
schaferfred Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 That's what I was trying to say, humidity and temp changes all the time I don't see how the evaporation rate could be consistant...it probably would be more productive to set up some type of float valve or something like that instead Link to comment
Wonder Boy Posted April 6, 2004 Share Posted April 6, 2004 Jimmy shakes his head at the puddle on the floor. Cursing Mother Nature as she once again spoils his grand scheme by not keeping every thing mathematically perfect. Link to comment
zzpw3x Posted April 6, 2004 Share Posted April 6, 2004 No amount of math is going to solve your problem. You need a float switch. Link to comment
Korbin Posted April 6, 2004 Share Posted April 6, 2004 I dunno man. It can be done. I figured out that I need to drip alk buffer one drip every 30 seconds to keep my alk constant and its working well. Offspring01 - you made a mistake. You're going straight from a volume of water per minute to drips per minute with no conversion. Doesn't work that way. Say your tank evaporates 1000 ml in a day (yeah, good ole metric. Its just easier;)) 1000 ml / 24 hours = 1000ml/day 1000ml/day divided by 1440minutes/day = 0.7ml/minute Count how many drips it takes to make a ml by measuring with a test kit vial or something. Say it takes 12 drips to make a ml. 12drips/ml * 0.7ml/minute = 8.4 drips per minute 8.4drips/minute / 60seconds/minute = 0.14 drips per second 0.14drips/1second = 1drip/x seconds 0.14x = 1*1 x = 7 so, 1 drip every 7 seconds. blammo Oh, and make sure you keep adding your addatives (buffers) in the 24 hours you measure your evap, so its a more realistic measurement. But, yeah, evaporation rates are never constant. When the weather gets warm and you open the windows, everything will probably change. So if your evaporation doubles, then you better double your drip rate. Or you could always just buy a float switch and say the hell with it - like I did But caclium and alk use is fairly constant. Like I said earlier, I calculated the rate at which I need to drip superbuffer the same way. I used an online calculator for that. I measured how much my alk drops in 24 hours, used the online calculator to determine how much I buffer I need to add to bring it back up that amount, and then did what I did above and it seems to work. If only I could keep the drip rate constant....... Link to comment
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