is this eveporation normal?

[harbingerofthefish]

Okay, I finally got the water in the tank and set it a runnin'. Took a while due to my LFS's RO/DI system snapping a fitting.

 

Anyways, it's run for just about 20 hrs now and I just got home from work to find the power head about to pop out of the water. This is about a half inch of water (maybe 1/8th of a gallon). The thing is there are no lights on. There are no leaks and the splash on the surface doesn't seem to be pushing out that much water( no water around the base or anything). Is this normal evaporation? It seems a little much.

 

I'm going to try and readjust the angle of my power head to see what happens in another 24 hrs.

 

 

5 gal. us tank , 80* and holding steady

[Sahin]

That seems too much. Is this an open top setup? My tank runs at 80F average and I have one pwerhead pointing directly at the surface, yet still it would take at least 7 days to evaporate a litre of water. --This is with lights running etc.

 

OK, I just noticed that your tank is only 5G, now this means the salinity may fluctuate quite alot due to evaporation when the lights are running.

You need perhaps an auto-top system to replace evaprated water.

 

Evaporation and consequently significant increases in salinity is a big problem with very small tanks.

 

Well, there isnt much else I can add, hopefuly someone else with more experiance can help out.

 

Hope this helps somewhat.

[tosi]

I think it seems reasonable.. Is your heater set at 80F? And what else do you have in the tank? The size of the powerhead matters cause of the amount of heat it puts out.

 

I have a 20g and it evaporates probably atleast a gallon a day.. I dont have any fans or anything either.

[Paul G]

My tank is approx 10 gals and runs at 81 degrees, evaporation is about half a litre per day without any cooling fan running and a lot more with.

 

I guess it depends on the amount of water surface area too.

 

Not sure if having lights on or off would make a difference assuming the temperature is the same, relatively speaking.

[tinyreef]

i lose about a quart/liter a day during the summer. your humidity and temp. will help determine evaporation. sahin points out a very important issue of exposure and surface agitation. other key issues determining rate of evaporation.

 

this is one of the major hazards of nanos imo. you may want to invest into some kind of auto/semi-auto topoff (an iv drip is cheap)

[harbingerofthefish]

Thanks for the replies.

 

Right now it is an open top but it now is to have a lid over the glass. After topping off, I went out for a couple of hours, and returned to find the top edged of my base to have water on it. What I believe is happening is that over the course of 4-5 hours the splash is accumilating on the underside of the lid and running off out of the tank. I'm keeping an eye on the salinity and so far so good.

 

Right now it's just water and dead sand. If I can get this little prob. fixed the rock and live sand comes tuesday.

 

So, now the new question. I'm only using the power head as airation. How much does it need to move the surface water to suffencently airate the water? By seeing it ripple an actually hearing the water splah some, is the enough?

 

Or should I just shell out for a HOB filter (less-media) for the airation, and just point the head into the tank as opposed to at the surface?

 

 

 

p.s. I know this should be in Beginners discussion, but I miss-posted the first time.

[Sahin]

If you have about 10x water flowrate per hour and along with surface agitation that you see and some ripples, that should be enough for efficient gaseous exchange.