Real bad experience with AC fan

[loverans]

I have been using AC fan for sometime and with no problem. Things happened 2 days ago really frighten me off. When I and my son were having dinner, we were shocked with an explosion sound came off from one of my tank. The electricity supply was immediate cut off and I stopped my son from going near to it. I called my electrician who adivced me to visually check any burnt in the socket. I later realised that the explosion was due to the AC fan and was burnt. It is still in one piece.

I really have no idea why this happened. The Sunon AC fan 2123 was bought new and in use for nearly a year. I still have my another AC fan in use with another tank. Not sure if I need to switch to DC fan.

Lesson learnt is to on electricity supply on when there is someone at home. I am lucky that I did this with my time.

Just to share this bad experience with you.

[juggler]

Thankfully you are home and everyone is safe.

Maybe you can try DC fan which is quieter. I believe uses less energy as well.

[vinz]

That's why I prefer to play safe with aquarium appliances and pay more for reliable stuff as they usually run 24/7 and definitely not supervised all the time.

No one at home and something happens? What if you are all sleeping and something happens?

[loverans]

Yes, safety always come first. I am now using back one old DC fan. I am not sure the same thing will happen. Its rather strange that the AC fan exploded. Any one has such experience may share and so all can take note.

[juggler]

I guess the explosion sound is due to short circuit. Water or dampness or bad wiring in the fan could have resulted in this.

I suppose DC fans would be safer as the voltage is usually 12V compared to 220V for AC. The AC/DC adaptor would be lying further away from the tank as well.

[michaelmah]

I think water incident go in and expose.

[loverans]

Thanks for sharing. I guess you guys are right. My is a 9 inch height tank. Rainbar is place near the surface of the water. Fan is above 4 - 5 inch above the rainbar. If that is the case, it will be safe to lower the rainbar into the water to avoid water spill to wire or fan.

[michaelmah]

In the DIy froum here, they add coil to clipfan and use some thing like alluminium plate and transfer to "cool" to tank like what the fan and coil do in our laptop.

Advantages: more silent than chiller and SAVE a lot electricity
temp may drop to 23c or 25c depend on tank size for using a single DC 12v fan and a coil.

Moment I cannt find it yet, where is the thread,.....I remember the thread from Silane.

Another pic from the japanese website.

Check this out.

http://kinobu.hp.infoseek.co.jp/kuuraa2.html

[Shadow]

Peltier is less efficient than compressor, I doubt that it will save electricity. Unless you use Resun CL280 to chill 1ft tank

Anyway there are those ready made Peltier chiller for small tank.

Quote from wiki:

Thermoelectric junctions are generally only around 5–10% as efficient as the ideal refrigerator (Carnot cycle), compared with 40–60% achieved by conventional compression cycle systems (reverse Rankine systems like a compressor). Due to the relatively low efficiency, thermoelectric cooling is generally only used in environments where the solid state nature (no moving parts, maintenance-free) outweighs pure efficiency.