DIY Chiller Idea

[blacksmith37]

The drinking fountains can cost more than a refridgerator (just got a couple for our church).
For fresh water you could used galvanized or bare steel pipe in the refridgerator; normal water changes will easily take care of the trace of zinc. For a salt tank you need titanium or high nickel (30%+) like Incoloy 825 for tubing. You cannot buy these for less than the price of a chiller (salt).
The idea of a long coil of rigid or flexible plastic tubing will work well with a refridgerator dedicated to "fish"; I mean a small bar or dormitory type refridgerator.

 

[Derpeder]

Yeah but if you had like 3 or 4 tanks to cool you could use one large frig and run all the coiled tubes through the one normal frig and back to their tanks.

One Huge chiller for like 5 tanks.


Shoot I have 5 tanks I need to chill everyday............jk.

 

[amehel0]

yeh with the ac unit they use copper piping and im scared that if your keeping invertabrates, well that they would die.

 

[ianwood123]

hi why dont you run it throgh the freezer box much better cooling , just put a stat on the outlet to turn freezer off and on

 

[chemicall]

If using copper you can buy rolls of flexible copper pipe, already wound up in circles. I seen some rolls at the hardware store the other day but didn't look at the price, It's probably not that cheap.

 

[yogurt_21]

I simply took some of my pc coolign and applied it. vapochill classic hooked to a gpu waterblock then run through 1/2" tubing to the pond. works wonders.
and it's much cheaper than aquarium chillers especially for the size. to chill 3300gallons it'd cost alot more than your 500$ chiller could handle.

not to mention those are just modded a/c's and fridges anyways. not enough market for a company to build them exclusively. the cost of the manufacturing facility would be too prohibitive unless they also sold a/c's and fridges.


and I'm quite skeptical about the comment on fridges using more power. a full size standup sure, but a mini? and minis are most often used in diy pc cooling. the main power draw for any coolant based solution is going to be the compressor so how the hell would a fridge draw more than a comperable chiller?

at any rate my solution is sub 200$ and chills 3300gallons. if you can find a chiller that does that for that cost by all means get 10!