Closed Loop Vs. Tunze Streams

[ahchung]

Finally I got your point. Although your statement "A submerged 45W powerhead will heat the water the same as a 45W heater" is theoretically correct, it is a very subtle statement. This is because a powerhead is not functionally equivalent to a heater. The main objective of a powerhead is creating flow, and in most cases this increases the rate of evaporation which cools the water.

Your point is very well taken though. I have been upgrading my equipments recently. My new skimmer has a 17W pump (my old skimmer had a 55W pump). I also purchased a pair of Tunze pumps which move water at 14000lph using 30W (I had 5 pumps which move water at 4340lph using 48W). I believe the new equipments are more efficient in the sense they performed more with less power consumption. This is especially important to me since I am only using a computer fan to cool my tank (I tried my best to avoid a chiller since I believe this is a waste of energy ).

Originally posted by goby1
ahchtung, that's addressed back a few pages. Yeah, it does. The heat transfer is the same, however. See the post in advanced too.

An equivalent statement to what I've been saying applies to external pumps. The more efficent they are, the higher the percentage of heat transfer to the water. A 100% efficient pump would conduct no heat to the air around it. All wattage would go to thermal energy in the water.