These lamps are most efficient at about 77° F., however, they are designed to operate at about 100° F. Light generation drops about 1% for every 2° F. rise in temperature above 77° F. This is due to the internal pressure of the lamp, which is directly related to light output - pressure is sensitive to temperature. A small fan might serve too purposes - light output is potentially increased if lamps are cool, and heat transfer to the aquarium water is decreased.
I wonder if there is a way to better cool your bulbs than just a fan? hmmmm…
Maybe find a way to re-route a small air conditioner vent into your light fixture? I know that some computers are now being cooled using an air conditioner that has been stripped down… same should work for cooling the air around your bulbs and/or ballasts, and there would be no real worry to your fish tank since the only thing you are doing is blowing cooled air across the bulbs… If you wanted to go super high tech, you could probably do some sort of heatsink on the ballasts and use antifreeze to cool the heatsinks, but that only affects the ballasts, not the bulbs. Your best bet would be to have a constant blast of cooled air blow across the bulbs…
Thing about it is I am not sure if you can cool the bulbs too much or too fast. Kind of like taking an empty hot coffee put and pouring ice water into it. Also most coolants and sort could be dangerous to work with for humans let alone our tanks inhabitants. Enough fans will certainly do the trick and won’t use too much energy.
Well I think the trick would be to have them cooled from the very start of the lighting cycle. If you let the bulbs run long enough to get hot and then put cold air on them, I think they COULD crack, but if you had the A/C set to turn on just prior to the bulbs turning on, you’d be fine.
Although honestly, I doubt the increase you’d see in efficiency would be out the window as soon as you had a window AC unit running all day on your light fixtures, even a set of fans would consume quite a bit of electricity.
You could also go the route that a lot of chicken houses use (I am a farmboy, so I know these things), on the intake side of their cooling system is a box that has cardboard that has been folded numerous times… then a fine mist of water is sprayed over the cardboard every couple of minute depending on how warm it is outside… then as the air is drawn through the wet cardboard it is cooled, producing cheap cool air, all you need is airflow. the problem for us would be that we are indoors and dont necessarily want water dripping anymore than we need.
Also, by the way, I am not giving these examples in seriousness. They are simply fun facts and possibilities that may be able to be adapted to work, if you were honestly interested in finding a way to make your light fixtures more efficient. I don’t condone doing any of these things to our light fixtures, it could cause serious harm to yourself or the inhabitants of your tank…
I wonder if anyone has ever tried some sort of 1 hour on 1/2 hour off 1 hour on lighting cycle of the main bulbs while remaining the actinics on the entire time… sort of a cooling time and cloud cover type situation to replicate real reef conditions… and keeping the bulbs cool at the same time…
ihuntinde, I think your missing something here. While in a chicken farm your blowing air over chickens and chicken crap in a fish tank cooling the fans your blowing air over… water. I kind of doubt a 2" piece of folded card board would offer as much evaporative cooling as a fan blowing over a turbulent large body of water.
Tim 4-5 years ago there were several people trying on and off cycles with their reef tanks. There were some lengthy threads on the topic on reef central, but where I do not know. Certainly can be done to some extent. If fish breed once every 12 sun sets, what happens if there are 2 sunsets in a day? If corals spawn every 365 sun sets and there are 2 sunsets a day? Breeders picked up on this pretty quickly. Doesn’t apply to every species, but certainly will for some.
Tim you were talking about having your lights on at night time, so you could see them when your home? What if you programmed them to be on for 5 hours in the morning and 5 hours a night? Then you could see them in the morning before you leave for work and at night when you come home. I’ve done it before on several reef tanks.
