Micro Chiller

[Sooners]

Has any used an IceProbe Aquarium/Water Chiller by Coolworks?

http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_AquariumPage~PageAlias~chillers_coolworks_iceprobe.html

or

http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_AquariumPage~PageAlias~chillers_coolworks_microchiller.html

If so, how did it work and what was / is your impression of same?

Thanks.

 

[Sooners]

Nobody has used, or uses, one? Really?

 

[dartmti]

I'm interested in seeing how well this thing works too. It seems to good to be true for the price.

 

[Sooners]

I suspect it works, but only on something small like a 10 gallon tank or so. I wonder whether it would suffice to cool a 10-15 gallon tank with a metal halide fixture (say 150 watts)....

 

[thatoneazn]

yep it works for small tanks nothing bigger then a 10 gallon ...i have on on my nanowave 9 works great

 

[reefnetworth]

i believe a fan would be a better investment.
i use one on my sump and it works great!

 

[iceemn360]

The Birch aquarium in san diego uses one on one of their cold water tanks ~ about 8 gallons or so

 

[jdallred]

I am running the ice probe on my 12g AP w/a 150w MH Sunpod. I installed the probe in a HOB I had similar to the "microchiller" in the second link above. Without the IP the tank would run from 81 to 84.7, with the IP the temp is consistent at 82. This with a room temp from 71 in the morning and 75 mid afternoon. A couple of weeks ago our air conditioner froze up and the room temp got up to 84. At this room temp the chiller was able to keep the tank at 83.4.

 

[cherubfish pair]

thatoneazn:
[welcome]

 

[Sooners]

jdallred -

Are you using a fan to assist with moving the heat from the 150w halide away from the tank, or is the IP doing all of the work?

I'm surprised your tank didn't get hotter with the halide without the IP. I guess the IP helps, though based on your numbers it doesn't sound like its a homerun.

 

[gordon2726]

I have one...worked great in my previous 10g with 70w Sunpod MH but sucks in my current 20g tank with 150w MH + 36w PC.

 

[jdallred]

There is a fan in the fixture but nothing on the tank. Besides the heat from the MH I am also running a MaxiJet 1200 for a return, Rio 600 for extra flow, a MaxiJet 900 on a Remora, and the pump for the HOB. So needless to say I am adding a lot of heat to the tank. I would agree for the high 84 degree room temp it wasn't able to keep the temp down but I would have hated to see how high the tank temp would have been without it. I do know that the IP can keep the tank stable at room temps up to at least 80 degrees. Also I never had a chance to see how low the IP would push the temp. So far it has worked well for me.

 

[ReefSafeNiger]

sweet.

 

[cherubfish pair]

This is a real poor picture, though it shows how I installed my IceProbe into my sump wall for my 10 gallon reef. All it takes to mount into a "wall" is a 1.25 inch whole saw for drilling either glass or acrylic depending on whether your mounting into glass or acrylic.