How do you run your inline chiller? I need help!

Kinetic

Kinetic

Active member
I have a Aqualogic 1/5 hp inline chiller which I will be hooking up to a Aquacontroller III.

It says minimum 7 gallons per minute (420gph) minimum and 15 gallons per minute (900gph) maximum flow through the chiller.

The chiller would only go on in the most extreme of conditions.

Do I have to have a pump running water through it all the time? if my chiller kicks in, it will draw water out of the sump and into the chiller, and back out into the sump, this loss of water will kick my ATO in and cause lower salinity (not too much since the total system water is about 200gallons).

Questions:
1. How does everyone run their inline chillers?
2. What pump should I use? Should I run it all the time and just turn on the chiller when needed? Seems like a waste? It needs so much GPH that I doubt I can run it inline with my other equipment that need much less gph.

thanks!
 
you need to be running the water through it at all times, only use the controller to turn the chiller itself on and off. It is a general rule not to leave any stagnant water anywere in your setup. This includes calcium reactors. The most common mistake made is to shut off the pump at the same time as the equiptment (when using a controller, for either reactors, chillers, etc). There can be a dangerous hydrogen sulfide build up that could potentially poison/pollute your tank when the controller turns the pump back on. Alot of factors play into this, including the amount of water and how long it was left stagnant. This appliese even in the winter time. If you plan to discontinue use for any length of time it is best to just remove it from your setup all together until you are ready to use it again.
 
P.S. How we run our chiller is briefly outlined in our sump build thread, and although that chiller is temporary, the new chiller going in this weekend will use the same feed methodology (and maybe even plumbing)
 
it'd suck for me to run a 700gph pump or something all the time, and have the chiller only kick in maybe once a week or so depending on the weather.

unless I can run it with something else, there really isn't any use of having water circulating there for no reason.

Maybe I can have it output to my skimmer with a recirc mod, a RDSB, and a phosphate reactor which will be a little better.
 
If I somehow mount my chiller above the sump could I have the drain from the main tank go through the chiller? Or is that weird?
 
Use the 700 gal as additional flow in the tank. Just think of it as another return pump. You can disconnect it in the cool months.
 
problem is my display tank is 8 feet above where the sump is, so I'd have to get a super pump to do anything (like my sump return is a panworld 200ps).

I think I'll have my skimmer intake, phosphate reactor intake, and RDSB intake come from the chiller. I think that will be more then enough flow through each of those components.

I already have a Quiet One 3000 for my current tank which will be broken down for this new setup, so I'll be using that to power the chiller. It's going to be heck of a plumbing job though. Do I need some kind of manifold to fork the water off like that?
 
ok, I have a bunch of gate valves I can use.

I'm going to be using a Quiet One 3000 to power the chiller, then have it fork to the skimmer, phosphate reactor, and RDSB. But that's still way too much flow.
 
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