Bong cooler for a 90 gal

[Hdeuce]

I think i have an very easy and relatively cheap way to cool a tank a larger tank would use a larger cooler and a larger hose but here is the DIY plan i dont quite know what the best material for fish safety and good heat conduction is but here goes nothing .


You tank a water pump of water size wanted depending on tank size and a cooler , as in a camp cooler or lunch cooler depending on the size of tank again. You drill holes in the cooler and run some sort of tubing through the cooler (the original plan of this idea was for a makeshift cheap air conditioner fan and it worked so they used copper (great conductor bad for fish) ) Anyway you run the tubing through the cooler fill the cooler with ice and water the ice and water in the cooler cools the water as it is pumped through the tubing by the pump just keep ice in the cooler and it should keep cooling the tank as long as the pump is pumping water through it. Also im sure that it could easily be retrofitted into a preexisting sump filter or dump filter rather easily . Ive never tried it but it sounds like it should work no prob . and with a heater in the tank set at the lowest temp you want should be easy to control temp to.

If anyone sees a reason why this wouldnt work let me know. and if anyone has a good material to replace the copper with that has good conductivity let me know that too.

 

[basslover34]

Ok... first... who wants to waste their time filling the cooler with ice all the time and next why do you think that copper is bad for fish?do you drink the water in your house?... all copper pipes in there ... copper is fish safe ... last time I checked the water that I used in my tanks came from a tap in my house which has copper tubing

 

[Hdeuce]

Ive always heard that the trace elements in copper tubing are bad for fish thats why people usually use other things for use in the fish tank, and secondly you shouldnt have to add more ice but maybe once every few days , if that depending on the temperature in your house . Those half gallon milk cartons are great actually freeze a few of those and just keep putting them back in the freezer after they thaw out and just keep switching them. when i made my homemade air conditioner i just added ice every day and that was just with a ****ty styrofoam cooler

 

[Dan F]

Ok... first... who wants to waste their time filling the cooler with ice all the time and next why do you think that copper is bad for fish?do you drink the water in your house?... all copper pipes in there ... copper is fish safe ... last time I checked the water that I used in my tanks came from a tap in my house which has copper tubing

Copper is fine for most fish, but it kills invertebrates. Also, aggressive water (acidic) will leach lots of copper into the water. As a kid I had a snail problem. The guy at the LFS told me to put pennies in the HOB filter. It killed the snails and spared the fish, so...

Copper is being gradually phased out of the plumbing industry, the main issue being cost. Other issues are the solder (doesn't contain lead, but antimony is bad stuff, too) and electrolysis between copper and ferrous plumbing components. In systems with neutral to slightly alkaline water it is still a good choice, but not as good as PEX!

 

[Lil_Stinker]

The little car fridges are "compressor free" They use a thermo-electric device (peltier system) that is very inefficient & very slow. They have a head-sink with a fan just like a computer.

The coolest I have ever seen one is 40 degrees F. normaly about 25~30f below ambient at best. Fine for (pre-chilled) cans of soda on a long trip. but they are not made to chill anything.

 

[crazyforcrabs]

I wouldn't use a small cooler for the setup in any case. I plan on running 2-3 medium sized tanks, about 50-90 gals, on it. Getting small sized fridge's around here is actually no problem. I'd prefer one with a compressor and thermostat anyhow. Those car fridge/coolers will do no good.

I'll set about making inquiries about the fridge this week, but you guys gotta tell me how to drill through it, where to drill through, and how to seal up the pipes and things.

A 50-60 litre fridge should be large enough for a couple of tanks right?