DIY chiller

josephv

josephv

New member
I'm looking for Ideas.I live in Florida and yes ,It is hot most of the year. Just installed My new halides and am looking for innovative ways to maintain the temp of a tank without buying a chiller .
 
Some threads on that here in DIY, but I believe they are still at the theory level. A quick search (if you can access the search engine) will pop them up. They are within the last week or so, so a manual search would work also.

Regards,

Jim
 
If you have the space, time and money to install then a geothermal chiller will work. Other than that, just use fans blowing across the waters surface for evaporative cooling.
 
Having your lighting enclosed so that you can move the heat away from your tank helps a great deal.
My lighting is enclosed in a wooden fixture that has 3" fans blowing in each end and one 4" fan blowing the heat straight up out of the top.
There is no difference in temperature whether lights are on or off.
 
I read somewhere you could bury 4" PVC pipe at least 4' in the ground and circulate your water thru that to help lower the temp. I think it would work pretty good here in Colorado, but I don't know what the ground temp is in Florida.
 
I've never been able to use the Search function. I always get the message: "Sorry. The search function has been temporarily disabled due to high server load. Please try your search again in a few minutes...."

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14866344#post14866344 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by uncleof6
Some threads on that here in DIY, but I believe they are still at the theory level. A quick search (if you can access the search engine) will pop them up. They are within the last week or so, so a manual search would work also.

Regards,

Jim
Click to expand...
 
Side Note...

Side Note...

You can search any website by going to Google and typing in:

Site:Websitename Condition1 Condition2

For instance - Site:reefcentral.com homemade chiller
 
go to walmart buy some cheap clip on fans , i bought the little metal looking ones, and put them in my canopy blowing across the water, and keeps my tank temp no more than 82 degrees in the summer with 3 250mh and 2 110w vhos. believe it or not that method works miracles.
 
Do what I did.

Buy a copper tube, the longer the better.

Plastic Tube, insert it inside the copper tube.

Preferbly coiled to save space.

Have it run through a bucket of icewater.

Ice Cubes are cheap right :D Your Fridge is running 24/7.

Connect it to an overflow output line.

Have it exit into your sump --> Filtersock or Fuge.

You can use just the copper tube with the flow, but I wouldn't recommend it...
 
Last edited:
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14871385#post14871385 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Poseidon
:eek: Waxy, you are not suggesting to run SALTWATER through a copper pipe are you????

DOH!!!! Sorry, missed the plastic insert part....

MAKE SURE TO USE THE LINER, unless you want to kill everything in the tank! ;)
Click to expand...

LOL! I fooled you good didn't I!
 
LOL!!! Yes!

I would leave the copper out all together though, you can get a significant amount of heat exchange with just thin walled plastic, like PEX tubing.

Much safer that way...

To the OP, you don't have a basement do you? If you do, do you have a sump/crock for rainwater down there?
 
Ya I guess you're right.

The objective is to have the water travel through the air or another location and away from the tank to exchange or disperse the temperature.

Tubing in a bucket of ice would work great too :D
 
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