Lobster

[cricket3901]

Planning on getting a lobster and I wanna know what kind of chiller I need to use or what you guys use? and yes, I’m getting a lobster and blue crab, but not in the same tank.




.P.S please don’t say you wanna eat them

 

[KrisReef]

How big is the tank? What kind of lobster? The kind we eat generally are cold water species but there are tropical (warm) water lobsters that don't need a chiller if the tank temperatures are good for tropical fishes.

Chillers are rated by the amount of temperature drop between the room and the tank water that you want to provide. Then, to make things interesting, the government has set up regulations on what kind of chemicals are ok to use for the coolant inside of the chiller. The good chemicals can be recharged if needed, but a chiller with the wrong coolant will have to be discarded if the coolant isn't on the governments list.

I have seen cheap chillers from overseas that did not list the coolant inside, which made me wonder if they were the old type coolant? All that to say, they are like a refrigerator for the water in our tanks. If you have a tiny tank and only need to drop the temperature a small amount below ambient room temp, then you do not need a 1 horse power unit, but if you have a larger tank you will need larger horsepower.

Look to the specs for the unit. You need legal coolant and proper sized unit to achieve the pull down (below ambient) to keep your lobster happy.

 

[cricket3901]

How big is the tank? What kind of lobster? The kind we eat generally are cold water species but there are tropical (warm) water lobsters that don't need a chiller if the tank temperatures are good for tropical fishes.

Chillers are rated by the amount of temperature drop between the room and the tank water that you want to provide. Then, to make things interesting, the government has set up regulations on what kind of chemicals are ok to use for the coolant inside of the chiller. The good chemicals can be recharged if needed, but a chiller with the wrong coolant will have to be discarded if the coolant isn't on the governments list.

I have seen cheap chillers from overseas that did not list the coolant inside, which made me wonder if they were the old type coolant? All that to say, they are like a refrigerator for the water in our tanks. If you have a tiny tank and only need to drop the temperature a small amount below ambient room temp, then you do not need a 1 horse power unit, but if you have a larger tank you will need larger horsepower.

Look to the specs for the unit. You need legal coolant and proper sized unit to achieve the pull down (below ambient) to keep your lobster happy.

The tank size is 200 gallons and it’s a main lobster

 

[cricket3901]

Saw video and they had the temperature at like 50°F

 

[KrisReef]

Saw video and they had the temperature at like 50°F

The people who keep tanks filled with Lobster try to keep them cooler so that the lobsters are close to hibernation temps which helps them last longer, like leftovers in the fridge to keep them fresh.

Seattle is fairly cool, a Maine lobster in the wild would probably be happy in temps 65F-70F ( wild guess) where it would be active and looking for food and growing.

Looking on line, the specs are all listed in BTU's, which is great if you remember physics.

Thankfully, AI suggests:
Formula for Sizing a Chiller

The basic formula for calculating the required BTU/hr for a chiller is:

Code

BTU/hr = Gallons per hour * 8.33 * Temperature Difference (°F)
Where:

• Gallons per hour: is the flow rate of the water being chilled.
• 8.33: is the weight of one gallon of water in pounds.
• Temperature Difference: is the desired drop in temperature.

So, 200 gallons/8.33 X 1F + 1666 BTU (Rating) for each degree you need to drop the tank below ambient.

If you the maximum temperature drop you need between ambient room temp and the water temp is 10F (a reasonable guess for the hottest day in Seattle You need a chiller rated ~16K BTU's

Google then provides a link to a 5 horsepower chiller. Between AI and Google, and me, I think a ONE horsepower unit could handle your load much of the time, but it all depends on your home temperature settings and how hot the room gets?

WHAT I see looking about the Google net is that the specs for each unit tend to list BTU's and let folks figure out how much chiller horsepower they need. The good old days a chiller would have a graph that provided pull down specs per gallon, (which is BTU's) but now we are supposed to do our own math.

My wife is waking and making coffee.

I would never try and keep a Maine Lobster. I would get a Caribbean or south Pacific warm water species that doesn't require a chiller. Cold tanks sweat. GL.

 

[rhitee93]

The guy on youtube has done pretty well with "Leon the lobster" for a couple of years. I don't remember if he has a chiller on that setup, but I know he talks about the mechanicals of his tanks quite a bit in the videos. It might be worth looking up.

Edit: I hadn't seen a Leon video in a while so I did a search. Sadly Leon died while molting in February.

 

[cricket3901]

The guy on youtube has done pretty well with "Leon the lobster" for a couple of years. I don't remember if he has a chiller on that setup, but I know he talks about the mechanicals of his tanks quite a bit in the videos. It might be worth looking up.

Edit: I hadn't seen a Leon video in a while so I did a search. Sadly Leon died while molting in February.

It wasn’t that guy

 

[cricket3901]

The guy on youtube has done pretty well with "Leon the lobster" for a couple of years. I don't remember if he has a chiller on that setup, but I know he talks about the mechanicals of his tanks quite a bit in the videos. It might be worth looking up.

Edit: I hadn't seen a Leon video in a while so I did a search. Sadly Leon died while molting in February.

It wasn’t that guy

I don’t really remember who it was, but it wasn’t him

 

[cricket3901]

Saw video and they had the temperature at like 50°F

The people who keep tanks filled with Lobster try to keep them cooler so that the lobsters are close to hibernation temps which helps them last longer, like leftovers in the fridge to keep them fresh.

Seattle is fairly cool, a Maine lobster in the wild would probably be happy in temps 65F-70F ( wild guess) where it would be active and looking for food and growing.

Looking on line, the specs are all listed in BTU's, which is great if you remember physics.

Thankfully, AI suggests:
Formula for Sizing a Chiller

The basic formula for calculating the required BTU/hr for a chiller is:

Code

BTU/hr = Gallons per hour * 8.33 * Temperature Difference (°F)
Where:

• Gallons per hour: is the flow rate of the water being chilled.
• 8.33: is the weight of one gallon of water in pounds.
• Temperature Difference: is the desired drop in temperature.

So, 200 gallons/8.33 X 1F + 1666 BTU (Rating) for each degree you need to drop the tank below ambient.

If you the maximum temperature drop you need between ambient room temp and the water temp is 10F (a reasonable guess for the hottest day in Seattle You need a chiller rated ~16K BTU's

Google then provides a link to a 5 horsepower chiller. Between AI and Google, and me, I think a ONE horsepower unit could handle your load much of the time, but it all depends on your home temperature settings and how hot the room gets?

WHAT I see looking about the Google net is that the specs for each unit tend to list BTU's and let folks figure out how much chiller horsepower they need. The good old days a chiller would have a graph that provided pull down specs per gallon, (which is BTU's) but now we are supposed to do our own math.

My wife is waking and making coffee.

I would never try and keep a Maine Lobster. I would get a Caribbean or south Pacific warm water species that doesn't require a chiller. Cold tanks sweat. GL.

They only had one