Dehumidifier shopping

[bryanisag]

Hi all, I live in California and I am building a fish room in my garage. The humidity is already getting high with 10 aquariums set up. I know I need a dehumidifier but I don't know what size I need. How many pints per hour. What brand. All that stuff. Anyone with any experience would super help! 

[Fish Folk]

I keep a small group of aquariums in my basement -- about 420 gallons total across a number of small tanks, ranging from 55 gal, 45 gal, 33 gal, down to 2.5 gal Killi tanks and 1 gal fry jugs on a rack.

I use three standard Dehumidifiers I bought from Lowes. I run them day and night until they fill, and dump them out at least 2x times a day. I tried setting up continuous with a hose attachment to a drain, but I have drainage problems. Between October - March they are set only if humidity rises above a set level.

I also run two room fans continuously to circulate air. Nothing is worse in a house than a serious mold infestation. A dry basement is step #1 to mitigating that buildup.

I know that's not all terribly brand-specific, but it gives you a benchmark. There's some work to emptying things out daily. I'd be happy for a better solution, but this serves my purposes. I do find that with the tanks higher up on racks, the water level drops fast. I tend to just top those tanks off with fresh water in stead of doing deep water changes.

[TOtrees]

Question: when you say you’re in California, can you be more specific? Coastal northern will be super different from coastal southern.

To answer your question, last winter I got a 50-pint “high capacity” Frigidaire unit (their description). It’s an absolute workhorse, and I would recommend it to anyone who needs one. Even when running the central air conditioner (which itself is like a dehumidifier), it pulls significant amounts of water from the air, like it fills the basket after perhaps 10 hours of daytime operation. The only downside, and it’s not insignificant, is the heat that is produced when operating. This will be a factor for any effective dehumidifier, and the amount of heat will roughly vary with the amount of water removed. If I were to run this unit in my one-room fish room, my water temperatures would soar. So I tend to run it in the adjacent room, when necessary.

I have two recommendations for you: First, jump on Amazon and get a bunch of relative humidity monitors (digital humidistats). Tiny little digital things, not super accurate but good enough, generally inexpensive. Put them in a few locations. Keep an eye on them. Get a sense of what the readings are where and when it feels uncomfortable, or when you think it needs to be running. I’ve been surprised that in my situation, I don’t really need to run my unit until relative humidity is north of 65 or 75. And sometimes not even that. Second, are there any simple ventilation solutions that will work for you, like fans? Even if these are only partially effective, one advantage over a dehumidifier is that they don’t add heat to your space.

Another consideration is direct drain units. Mine has this feature, but I’m unable to use it because I can’t connect the unit in a room with a floor drain. I also can’t say that I resent having to empty the unit manually, because it gives me a better sense of what’s going on. 

Last thought (should be first): you have lids on your tanks, right?

[bryanisag]

I knew I could count on y'all for some guidance. I live in Hollister California and I have lids on half my tanks. I will buy some monitors on Amazon now and I will probably buy a 50 pint dehumidifier soon. And a ceiling fan but I'm not looking forward to installing that...