I wasn’t sure if this should be under the beginner or the construction section, since I am a beginner I settled for that section. I hope this is the correct section.
I’ve read that it is dangerous for fish (and frogs if they come in contact with the water while unit is on). Is this due to the ultrasonic sound waves or do the parts release toxins some how? I guess my real question is this, I’m planning to have a sump filter feeding a water feature and rather than having to watch the water levels in two separate reservoirs I would like to simply place the humidifier into the sump.
If I think of the water as a conductor it is easy to see how ultrasonic sound waves could be conducted from the sump, through the submersible pump, up the hose and finally into the vivarium. I’m also concerned about possible contamination of the water with some sort of nasty chemicals or minerals from the humidifier. Am I over thinking again, it wouldn’t be the first time? I would love to know if anyone has tried this or might have better information for me.
There are a few dangers, but they are only when the unit is inside the tank.
1) Contact with the vibrating membrane while its running can cause tissue damage. I guess it can shake the water right out of skin. Hurts a lot I'd bet.
2) Heat - Those little standalone units get really warm, and can heat the water significantly depending on the volume of it. In an actual humidifier you won't notice, and the fog itself will cool down to room temp extremely quickly.
It sounds like you are submersing a drugstore type humidifier into a sump? I would assume that the entire unit is not made to be underwater, only the reservoir section... ? I would not recommend submerging the entire unit...
However, as far as your other concerns, nasty chemicals and minerals - no. It will only disperse the water you put in it, it won't alter it. So, the cleaner the water, the less mineral build up you'll have in the humidifier membrane, and the less cleaning of the unit you'll need. The ultrasonic waves won't affect anything other than the water in the very immediate vicinity of the membrane.
Oh, that brings me to one other big issue. The humidifier part will for sure not work if its submerged too deep. More than a couple inches of water over it, and the fog won't make it out of the water at all.
Hope that clears it up for you. Also, fyi, those standalone foggers don't work nearly as well as a drugstore humidifier in my experience.
The real idea was to connect the reservoir (of a drugstore type humidifier) to the sump of my wet/dry via a bulk head. I could use a stand pipe to presicly control the water level in the humidifier and the simply use a tee in the return line to over fill the humidifier. Though you did mention somthing I hadn't thought of ... water quality. Over time a short time organic solids from frog and plant waste would probably put the unit to an early grave.
Matt pretty much covered the dangers. Fill your humidifier regularly with clean water and put the whole unit on a timer to run for say 5-10 minutes twice a day. Put a hose over the outlet of the humidifier and run it into the tank via bulkhead or whatever you prefer. It should be fine like that and danger free
im confused about why you would want the humidifier in your sump? are you talking about the small wet dry under the stand? if thats the case, i would assume your stand would be really really humid, but it probably would affect the tank much unless you ran some sort of enclosed air ducts that would seal the sump off and pump air up into the display.
im confused about why you would want the humidifier in your sump? are you talking about the small wet dry under the stand? if thats the case, i would assume your stand would be really really humid, but it probably would affect the tank much unless you ran some sort of enclosed air ducts that would seal the sump off and pump air up into the display.
The idea is to run it in the traditional manner with one exception. The humidifier would sit on top of the wet/dry. I would drill two holes in the reservoir of the humidifier. One on the bottom with a stand pipe to serve as an overflow and one on top to be attached to the normal return to the vivarium from the wet dry. The reason is so that I would only need to worry about topping off one system instead of having two distinct water levels to monitor.
I think it was a good idea, however after reading Matt's inital response it dawned on me that I'd be supplying some fairly dirty (compaired with pure distilled) water to the Humidifier which no doubt would shorten the life of the humidifier significantly. Probably not the best idea I've ever had.
i understood what you meant, and thought it was a good idea about the stand pipe, and the drain,
what im asking, is why do you want it in the sump/stand? wouldnt it only humidify the stand? dont you need to pump the humid air up and into the tank?
i may be missing something very obvious, but thats why im asking. im confused. ops:
I'm sorry, I'd said "the traditional way" and by that I meant the traditonal way that we typically use a humidifier and I mean an unltrasonic humidifier. Most of the ultrasonic humidifier's you can buy in a drugstore or mega chain store have a large opening say 2 inches accross on the top. To this we plumb a hose and run it into the vivarium. If you've never heard of or seen this method before you should do a quick search for "ultrasonic" here on the forums. You'll see hundreds of posts, many of which will have pictures and we all know the cliche "a picture is worth a 1000 words".
now that makes more sense! thanks lol. im pretty new, and still picking up on certain things, havent ran across that one yet. and i was trying to figure out why you wanted to rot all the wood under your tank really fast. lol
Ultrasonic humidifier Question
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