aquarium chillers

[biteme53520]

any advice on aquarium chillers:cool:

[aquaking]

They keep the water chill

[guppy]

They are expensive but available, about $650 for one geared to a 180g tank through big Al's. You can make one that will do about a 30 degree drawdown for a 300g by getting a 2-2 1/2 cubic foot refrigerator (under $100), a 1250 gph inline water pump (about $70), and lots of 1/2" plastic tubing. Drill two holes in the fridge big enough to admit the tubing and coil most of it inside the fridge, silicone the tubing at the holes, the inline pump to the side of the fridge and use it to pump water through the tube. the drawdown can be adjusted with the fridge's thermostat and by adjusting the ammount of tubing inside the fridge. It does not wreck the fridge as long as you make sure you do not strike a cooling tube when drilling so if you no longer need a chiller just remove the tubing and plug the holes. The one I helped make had small freezer section that my friend used to store frozen fish food and still had room to keep a few beers in.

[stingray4540]

Sweet!!! That is excatly what I have been designing in my head to build to cool a trout tank! The tubes and everything even right down to holding my beers. You say that the one you built kept the tank 30 degrees cooler. So what temp does it stay at? 45F?

[USMCtanker]

ya im thinking of starting a cool water tank 2

[guppy]

We had the temp set at 55 F for a salt water natives tank. the thing was tested by letting it take athe tank from room temp as low as it could over night, the tank temp. was 72 F to start and 42 F the next day. The fish came from near Pt. Reyes and from near China Beach.

[stingray4540]

so you were able to keep it anywhere from 42 to 55 that's pretty good. I'm definately going to have to make one now.

[davo]

they are well expensive, but then over here, we're more worried about heating our tanks