Glass for the win. No salt creep, rinse off occasionally, little evaporation. Love them.
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These are all n=1, but here goes:Octo Aquatics. Love mine, but yeah, wasn't cheap.
I don't use, or recommend, acrylic or glass tops. Acrylic? Really? That'd sag, be crusty, and get scratched in no time. Glass works, but you've got to clean it regularly. Most folks I know that have glass tops on a marine aquarium also have huge salt creep deposits all over them. Just too much of a pain to clean.
What's the benefit again? Oh yeah, less evaporation.
You know, evaporation isn't a bad thing... keeps tank temp lower (how many of us run chillers? Not me...). If you're running Kalkwasser, gives you the ability to dose more each day. A decent ATO system means your evaporation is handled... no problem, right? Keeps the house humidity up during the winter... I don't see the problem.
I suppose, some folks pay a high cost for water... but really, you'd have to be evaporating a lot to exceed the water usage from a load of laundry or a toilet flush. Here, water costs only maintenance and electricity to get it out of the well.
20 gallons of rodi water I assume... 20 gallons of di resin is crazy... I use about 60 gallons of rodi water a week... which for me is about 1 cartridge fill (buy in bulk and refill).I suppose it all depends on your local situation.
I don't use chillers, but I do need to run heaters 24-7 if I take the lids off. Evaporation reduces the temperature of the tank. Evaporative cooling is more of a problem than the water loss itself. On shallow frag tanks I find it hard to even maintain temperature without a lid unless I run huge heaters constantly.
By the way, in the summer I get to take them off and cool the tank for the cost of water, which is very cheap here too (I'm on a well). But don't forget, its not water we put in our tanks, its RODI which has additional costs.
For me its less about the raw cost of the RODI water than the sheer amount. I go through 20 gallons of DI a week for my home tanks alone. If I took the lids off that would at least double. I don't want to make that much RODI each week.
No one size fits all solution here, but I dont see any of these disadvantages. I prioritize minimizing evaporation over almost everything else.
Glass lids for life.
I see no reason to worry about gas exchange in a system with a skimmer and sump.
And I find the cleaning concerns are way overstated. I have to clean my tank glass every 2 to 3 d. My lids ... maybe once a month?
5 to 10% less PAR to cut evaporation at least in half... glass lids all the way for me.
With mesh lids you are still only replacing the amount of water that was lost through evaporation. The salt stays behind. As long as you're only replacing the water that is evaporated off there will be no significant drop or increase in salinityI see the talk about kalk and evaporation, but for me, so far it has been about salinity. My ATO just feeds fresh RODI water, do those of you with mesh ever see your salinity dropping from adding too much fresh water?
Oxygen has nothing to do with ph... just fyi
I’ve been running a mesh lid for over 2 years now on my 65g which is only about 1 1/2” away from the back wall and have no issues. This wall is painted Gyprock - think you call it drywall in the US?To those that go mesh lid or no lid... Do you see damage to the walls behind the tanks or any wood around the tank? We keep one in our office with out a lid and there's a huge picture above it (that admittedly is too close to the tank) that constantly has salt and water deposits on it and the wall. Our 180 gallon is in the living room and I would much rather clean the salt creep off of the glass lid than clean the wall.
Unrelated, does anyone have one close to a fire place? Have you seen any ill effects?
Windows closed, CO2 goes up, O2 goes down, pH goes down. Open a window, O2 goes up, pH goes up.Oxygen has nothing to do with ph... just fyi