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Something cool I did

Clint

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I had a barely used (like 1 month) HOT Magnum and a NASTY water reservoir in the bottom of my terrarium. I hooked it up so that it sucks water from one side, filters it through a filter pad and carbon (that I plan on replacing once every 2 weeks) and then squirts it out on the other side through a tube like a little water fountain! Hurray! Circulating, filtered water now! No more green slime tannin filled stagnant nastiness! Or worms! The filter also takes a micron filter so I can get almost every last particle out.

To see how much water-cooling would help, my terrarium was at exactly 80 degrees and I put an ice pack (I'd estimate that it holds a quart of gel) under the output so that the water runs over it, and I put the hygrometer on the OTHER end of the tank and it cooled it by 5 degrees so far, and the ice pack is only... maybe 20% melted. I bet this will come in handy in an emergency heat wave!

No more nasty swamp water! And now instead of siphoning it , I can just put the output tube into a bucket and pump it out with the filter. Hurray! Since the filter is an external filter, I'm not worried about it heating the water at all since it's in the basement. Or at least the temperatures are normal so far. I put some small leaves in the water to see how well my plan worked, boy did it ever! They were all sucked up.

How satisfying. Now that I'm going to have clear water (replacing 5 gallons every week is my normal routine, so that should get rid of the tiny amount of tannin's that aren't absorbed by the carbon) I was thinking of putting mylar on the bottom of the tank.

I wonder if I can rig it up to make a sort of wet-wall. Or maybe try growing something hydroponically with the output water flowing through a pot of clay media or something.

The only thing that worries me is that one day I might clean it and leave town, and then it quits on me after I leave because it didn't prime properly and the motor burns out. That would suck pretty bad. It's a 250 GPH filter, and there is probably only 20 gallons of water in the terrarium, so the filter filters all of the water 12.5 times per hour.

There is a small amount of splashing, and surprisingly the humidity rose a whipping TWELVE percent! It's now at 92%.


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EDIT: Don't get the impression that the filter cleaned the nasty opaque water and made it clear. I have the tank a thorough cleaning before I refilled it :)
 
hey man, thats pretty cool. I will try doing something like that for my highlanders (ahem .. 2 plants... :blush: ). Hmm....do u use HPS for lighting?? I am considering it as it takes nearly : 32 x 3 + 36 so lets say around 140 W for all those tubes. Instead.....I am thinking...why not use one big bulb at like 125 watts for the entire thing. ;)
 
It's an HPS ballast, but I use a conversion lamp so I am able to run a MH bulb on a HPS ballast (You can't switch them out willy nilly, you have to use conversion lamps). Don't buy a HPS unit, always go with MH if you have a choice. I'm only using this because it was given to me to replace my VHO setup.

The thing with HID lighting is that it gets very hot, and it's a point source light so that means that you have one bright spot and as you move away it gets less intense (pretty dark by my standards). You'd have a hard time trying to use a HID light with the indoor greenhouse thing you are using now. It would be probably melt the plastic. It warps the thick acrylic I use to cover the top pretty bad.

And I'd get no less than a 250 watt setup. I'm not even satisfied with my current lighting. The more powerful your lamp the more growing space you have with optimum light (and the more heat you have to deal with and the more it'll cost.... pick your battles I guess)
 
hmm.....I guess then its better to get my 2 foot flouroscents as I planned. These gro and sho lights are crap. I think I will try to find the similar bulbs of philips daylight that I use for my VFT's and all for my neps. I think the neps will love them. But, probably I might have to shade them a bit before exposing them all.
 
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