duckhuntboy Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 My tank is in the dorms right now, and it's already 77 degrees in the rooms. I was wondering what the absolute cheapest aquarium chiller is that I could buy before things start to suck for my fish tank, or is there an alternative to aquarium chillers? Thanks. Link to comment
Jandree22 Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 get a cheap clip-on fan from Target and aim it across the surface of your water. This is an extremely cheap way to lower your water by 3-5 degrees. HTH, Joel Link to comment
Caesar Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 get a small fan and blow air over the surface of the water. it's very good at dropping the temp but you will have to top off your tank more often. Link to comment
duckhuntboy Posted April 10, 2003 Author Share Posted April 10, 2003 But the temp in my room is going to be getting up to around 85 degrees. Won't I just be displacing air with even hotter air? Right now I have a plan formulated to dump distilled water ice bricks into the media slot of my whisper HOB. Will this get too cold? Perhaps I should use just ice cubes instead of a whole brick to fill the entire filter? Link to comment
adinsxq Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 the fans would increase evaporation (cooling) by moving vaporized molecules just above the waters surface. when this happens, new water molecules from the liquid water take their place and so on. (vapor pressure) Link to comment
tinyreef Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 go to radio shack or some online computer supply house (e.g. tigerdirect.com) and get a heat sink and cpu fan. they usually have the adhesive with the kit. i'm waiting for the really hot days to put it to the test. otherwise the fan is perfectly fine and very effective (and cheaper). watch your water level and salinity. imo get an auto topoff. Link to comment
chvynva916 Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 Not sure if you're allowed to, but you could just get an air conditioner for $100 at Walmart. I just got one to keep my tank cool! Link to comment
duckhuntboy Posted April 10, 2003 Author Share Posted April 10, 2003 Well, that's my problem is the money issue. I was going to mount a CPU fan, but I only need it cooled the rest of april. In May, I'll be in a house, and it will be air conditioned all the time. That's why I was wondering about the ice trick I mentioned, becuase I'd like to avoid a mounted fan if at all possible. I've got a fan mounted in my 4.3 gallon cube tank, and so far, the temp stays at 80 degrees, but it's still 75 outside, so we'll have to see how it goes. Any comments about the ice cube idea? will that be too much cold water flowing on my corals? Link to comment
Fire Marshall Dave Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 Check this out.... http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...ghlight=cooling To summarize.... Dave ESPI says, "float soda bottles w/ frozen ice water on top the tank, or bottles stuffed in yer HOB filter" reefan says, "I would put ice in a zip-lock bag and put it in your HOB filter Use either of these methods and you don't have to worry about the number of ice bricks you use affecting your salinity. Dave P.S. Should I get a tank before I start throwing opinions around? Link to comment
Jandree22 Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 yah... relying on that ice thing probably isn't the best... I think it'd cause more problems than you'd thing with affecting the salinity. The idea of putting water in a bottle and freezing the bottle is pretty good IMO. That way you don't need to keep lowering the salinity. Link to comment
duckhuntboy Posted April 10, 2003 Author Share Posted April 10, 2003 Yeah, but with top-offs, I'm already dumping a ######load of water into the tank everyday. I'm not too worried about a ziplock full of ice I dont think. Thanks for the thread abou it. kyle Link to comment
Toyfreek Posted April 10, 2003 Share Posted April 10, 2003 Ice probe chiller $85 Take your size tank(10-15gal) down 10 degrees or so. You will need a dependable heater to controll it in case it gets too cool. I have used them on several nano's now for clients and they are great little machines. Peace, Toy Link to comment
caja Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 So far I've been using the bottle of frozen water, but I try not to lower it more than two degrees at a time. It lowers pretty quickly (about 5-10 min) and I don't want to stress the tank out, so down 2 degrees, wait a while, down 2 more. That is usually all I have to do. I've only gone to 84 degrees twice, but my CSL retrofit keeps my tank at 82 during the day, so I need to be careful on warm days. I'm going to check on a chiller tomorrow! Link to comment
mxpro32 Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 tiny- a fan and heat sink arent going to do anything unless you are using a probe with a peltier cooling device (like the ice probe). Link to comment
adinsxq Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 Originally posted by mxpro32 tiny- a fan and heat sink arent going to do anything unless you are using a probe with a peltier cooling device (like the ice probe). i think tiny is suggeting use of a fan/sinc to pull heat out of the hood instead of the water. Link to comment
MacnReef Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 duckhuntboy, get an iceprobe chiller from aquatic eco-systems or from Drs Foster, they run about $120 and will cool 10g of water 20 degrees. Link to comment
tinyreef Posted April 11, 2003 Share Posted April 11, 2003 oops, i missed your reply, sorry. i'm using the heat sink attached directly to the rear tank wall (where there's some flow). this setup would not work as well as for acrylic tanks but hopefully will be as effective (or more) with glass tanks. i'm hoping the thermal conductivity of the glass (and its proximity to the heat sink, actual contact) will be as good or better than the ice probe's threaded um, probe. i splurged and got a wicked heat sink (for Pentium 4's) so i hope that will help too. june-july-august will be the true tests so i hesitate to fully advocate this method. we leave the offices warm at night and i've always had fans going 24/7 between may and september. Link to comment
southpaw23 Posted May 28, 2003 Share Posted May 28, 2003 Hi guys.... I know i'm a little late coming into this thread...not even sure if it's still alive but i wanted to put in my two cents on the heatsink and fan combo.... Have actually tried to implement it in my tank and found that with a pretty good heat sink...it is able to pull the tank temp down by a couple of degrees but the temp will only drop to the ambient room temperature....meaning...if you've got lights blazing and heating the tank up...the sink does a fairly good job in dissapating that heat but the temperature will not go below room temp. If you look at it logically....all the heatsink does is dissipate excess hear from the surface it is attached to....if the room temp is around 85...and the tank temp is below that like at say 82...the heat sink won't do a thing for the temp. The alternative to this is to get a peltier cooler as mxpro32 has mentioned but not in the form of the iceprobe. In this case just the peltier itself and attach it to a VERY good heatsink on one end and the other end to a coldplate that will be attached to the tank surface. What the peltier does is transfer heat from one side of the plate to the other (as current flows through the peltier) This causes one end to get real hot while the other gets real cold...the difference in temp depends on the kind of peltier you purchase....in my opinion a 50-80 watt peltier would do the job just fine...but do keep in mind that the higher wattage the peltier...the better your heatsink has to be to help dissapate the excess heat (a normal pentium 4 heatsink will definalte not cut it) The coldplate works to efficiently transfer the the heat (or cooling in this case) to the tank surface thus lowering the overall temp of the whole tank.....this would work better than the fans as you don't have to deal with the additional evaporation caused by the fans. Mind you this is not necesarrily the cheapest means of cooling the tank....i thought it was initially, but after doing alot of research on this....it does get to the point where you can just as easily purchase an iceprobe for about the same price... firstly, the peltier would cost you about 30-50 dollars and a GOOD heatsink would cost about 50...plus the coldplate....it could easily works out to about 100 USD anyways.....my problem is that i can't get my hands on an Iceprobe in Malaysia...no one sells em here....currently debating on either going with this method of figure out a way to have the iceprobe shipped to me. hope the input helped.....and if anyone has more info on this....do correct me if i'm wrong here....as i said before....i'm still in the midst of researching... Oh and Kyle...if your tank temp is at 80 while the room temp is at 75...u have a good chance of lowering the temp in the tank with a good heatsink.....good luck with that..... Link to comment
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