New Heating Method...

[spAcE mOnkEy]

Instead of going out and buying a new heater that is over $10, i'm going to try heating my 5 1/2 gal tank with a heat lamp. The heat lamp is for lizards, but its a 40 watt bulb. Anyone think that this will provide enough heat ot heat the whole tank? The lamp can go up to 50 watts. I have to set up a new 5 1/2 gal from scratch, i managed to find an old whisper filter, and i will use my own filter material, fish floss and cermaic rings for filtration. I'm going to clone a tank basically, and raise the SG slowly.

 

[onemisterchristian]

I think that needless to say; even if the lamp itself did provide enough heat to get the tank up to tropical temps,
then it would still be near impossible to keep the tank at a stable temperature. For a 5 and a half gallon tank it would be cheaper to just buy the heater then to hook up some sort of diy rig to regulate the temp via a heat lamp.

 

[teaker1s]

heat transfer would be poor

 

[Shelly_Otterkin]

LOL I tried this once years ago! It made for a vary green unstable tank that you could not see any thing in! )

 

[SkiFletch]

I agree, the heat transfer and co-efficient of performance will be so low that in the end, it will be cheaper to buy the $10 heater as opposed to paying electric bills for the light. Recovering waste heat in aquariums is quite ineffective with all but the most exotic of engineering setups, and the cost just isnt worth it.