acrylic sheeting as heat insulator?

[ackelley]

This may sound like a dumb question to many of you but is it ok to place acrylic sheeting between your lights and your tank on the lip .021 or .21 thickness. I think this will help curb the splashing of salt out of tank as well as evaporation it will also act as a barrier between the heat of the lights and the tank. But I am not shore it this will significantly affect the quality of the light you have.

[cpreefguy]

Acrylic has pretty good clarity, better than regular glass.
What type of lights do you have and how far will the acrylic be from them?
The only problem I see is with heat issues, but other than that it would be fine

[hobogato]

it will definitely cut down on the light that gets to your tank - especially when it starts to get salt crust on it.

[Ross]

Like I told you on the phone, your bulb will be fine! All the acrylic will do is trap heat!

[mkengr45]

yep, your temperature will get much higher. I wouldnt do it.........................

[ackelley]

Hi Ross I didn’t call you LoL different guy but the fish I got from fin addicts are doing great. :} (guess someone else had the same idea) I was thinking that it may help with evaporation and the temp that my tank is at is slightly cool “from 78 – 74 avrg when cold front hit it went into the 60’s the people I live with are polar bears never turn off ac” so I was looking at it as a possible insulator for the winter and thought this would help solve the temp problems for the winter and curb some evaporation. The main problem that I saw was that the light would be affected aka the salt or the acrylic would filter out a good chunk of the light spectra even if I used thin acrylic.

[Ross]

ohhh weird, someone just called and asked the exact same question. To keep your temp up i would just use a small heater, your temp will be more consistent.

[ackelley]

cool thx lol i guess there are 2 idiots in this world with same idea what size heater should i get for a 55 gal ?

[ackelley]

the ones i looked at where kinda expensive

[Ross]

haha no not idiots! Honestly i'm not very familiar with heaters, i dont use one. I think 150-200 watts is what you would need though.

[brewercm]

Make sure you consider total water volume (sumps etc.) in your wattage. I'd put in a good quality 300 watt and you'll be fine, maybe even 250watter.

[ackelley]

I have a 30 gal filter and sump. A 10 gal mangrove tank and the 55 gal aquarium with density of aprox 1.025g/cm^3. Thant system has about 90 gal’s and that is with a fudge factor, lower water level in sump and for all the tubes and hang on filter box. So a 250 should work?

[Ross]

I would think that would be fine, smaller heaters are a good thing to me, incase they malfunction and stay on a smaller heater wont boil your tank as quickly!

[matt]

In general 3W/gallon is a recommended heater size. Getting back to your acrylic question, cast acrylic of good quality, like Spartech, has 87% light transmission, much more than glass, but remember that it's not very heat tolerant. You could have a Salvador Dali sculpture over your tank if you're not careful.

BTW, acrylic has about twice the insulating value of glass, so it tends to keep cool tanks cool and hot tanks hot. Anything fitted over the top of your tank will really keep the heat in.