Tanks In Garage- Heating?

[happyclam]

I've some people set-up there reef tanks in there garage, such as Steve Weast. My question is though, in the winter when a garage can be almost as cold as the air outside (20-40 F), how do you keep your tank warm enough? Do you just have to get really powerful aquarium heaters? Do you have to worry about the MH not funtioning? Maybe Steve Weast himself can shed some light on this.

[chimmike]

Down here in FL, one of my buddies set up his sump/fuge in his garage. He basically built it inside a counter and heavily insulated it, and used basically an a/c vent from the house to the garage where his pipes ran thru. We have the opposite problem as the northerners do, but before he insulated the area, his water temp hit 85*.

After he insulated it, it maintained a steady 80.6*.

I'd say with heavy insulation and a good heater or two and you should be okay...

[Logzor]

Happy,

My parents always have heated their garage with a kerosene heater like this one:

http://www.northerntool.com/images/product/images/177679_lg.jpg

My dad hooks it up to a thermostat and can take the garage from freezing to toasts in like 5 minutes. Some of those put out MASS heat and are save to use in a larger open garage. We always spent a lot of time in there so it made it great for heating the area up quickly.

This may or may not be an option that you can take but it would be more efficient than using a ton of aquarium heaters.

[primer7]

I have three tanks in the garage here in Reno, I use insulation foam panels cut to fit the glass all around and just use the in tank heaters, works great as long as you keep the top covered. Winter here is very cold...

[crvz]

Heating is easy, what happens when you need to cool? A buddy of mine has his tank in the garage, and his chiller runs 24/7 in the summer. adds around $700 to the electric bill.

[cham]

Sumps in the garage are just fine. Mine is in the garage and its a steady 95* or more all day long here in florida. The sump is more gallons than my display and I run 79* all day long without a chiller. Just small PC fans that really only run a couple hours total per day.

And my sump is NOT insulated.

crvz, unless your buddy is running a 1500g system in his garage I suspect your buddy is spinning you a tale.

[atvdave]

I have my sump in my garage plumed through the wall to my tank in my living room.

Here in southern Indiana it gets very hot & cold. I built a insulated cabinet to keep it in with doors, but with the massive amount of humidity the sump evaps out I keep the doors cracked and run a fan 24/7.

In the winter my heater's keeps the temps up easily, and with 70% of my water volume in my main tank the temps don't get that cool anyway.

In the summer the fan's cools the water with no problem, even on 100 degree days. The hottest my tank has been is 83. Most of the time it stays around 81 in the summer.

[bill-fit]

I put my sump and filtration system along with anything that makes noise inside a cabinet I built in the garage.

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj315/bill_fit/aquarium/DSCN2801.jpg

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj315/bill_fit/aquarium/DSCN2797.jpg

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj315/bill_fit/aquarium/DSCN2795.jpg

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj315/bill_fit/aquarium/DSCN2883.jpg

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj315/bill_fit/aquarium/DSCN2894.jpg

http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj315/bill_fit/aquarium/DSCN2802.jpg

I have 1200 watts of heat but without the cabinet it probably wouldn't be enough.

[steveweast]

In my case, the system's water volume is large enough to not need heaters. Water holds alot of heat....and I'm chiller driven year round. The intense lighting and numerous pumps certainly create enough heat to neccessitate a chiller even on the coldest winter's day......but, the water volume is so large...that the 12 hrs that the lights are off.....is not enough time for the system to lose that much heat.

During the winter, my garage exhaust fan turns off during the night.....and my garage walls are insulated. In western Oregon, our typically winter's lows are around 35 F...but we can get to single digits for days at a time. The ambient temp can be 10 F....but, the tank keeps the garage at 60 F. If I had just the sump in the garage, it would be a different story.....but... all the lights and pumps provide plenty of heat to keep my garage warm even on the coldest winter's night.

[reefkoi]

I live in Colorado, we get really fierce winds where i'm at and it gets downright cold!

I have a 240 gallon frag system with sump sitting on the concrete floor.
Last winter the temp was always at 78 and never dropped or raised more than 1 degree.
I simply have 2-150 watt heaters in the sump, thats it.
the tank is 4'x4'x2' deep so it has huge surface area which worried me but seems to be amazingly consistent at 78 degrees in the summer and winter.

Oh yeah i have a large exhaust fan for the summer, its plugged into the RK2 as a chiller so it turns on when the temp rises above 78 and the heaters turn on if the temp drops below 78.

C