The hot spell is over and um?

[crazyfish253]

If you don't have a chiller how many have a giant to ice cube on the ready? I have 220 gl total and a gallon cube pulls it down 1.2 digress. What's you're set up and ice digress pull down? Might have to do a study on ambient/tank temp pull down chart for the hot day's we seldom have in the Puget sound.

 

[rainydave]

I have about 10 water bottles I keep in the freezer. I rotate them into my 20L sump. It keeps the temp in check on most of the hottest days.

I haven't had to use them yet this year.

 

[crazyfish253]

Used mine once so far before the AC got up and running. I try to keep my tank perfect at 77.6. It got up to 81.9 had to throw the ice in.

 

[Peppie]

I dont have any ready, but I do have a swamp cooler ready to go that will keep the room temp down. It was cheaper than a chiller. And I dont have to worry about a leak.LOL

 

[Krish]

Man, I live in the Bahamas and heat is a killer!! Even running central air 24/7 I had trouble with keeping temps down with dual 250w metal halides. Here is what I did that controled the temp and kept it where I wanted it, but eventually I did add a chiller for peace of mind and as back up. Never tried the frozen bottle trick although I have heard people swear by it.


The arrows point to 3 fans in the lid that sucked out hot air and the two pointing to the sides brought in cool air and blew it across the surface of the water. These ran on a timer that turned them on with the halides and shut them off an hour after the halides went off.






Canopy closed to show vents I used








Then I added this clip on fan over the sump and removed that black backing you see in this picture to allow cool air to circulate in the stand.






So as mentioned I did add in a chiller, but for those newer members that never used metal halides, this should give you an idea of what they put out! They are as hot temp wise just as much as they are bright in this picture!

 

[Somethings Fishy]

i like the bottle idea! i thought about making one with a mini freezer i have laying around, take some plastic tubing and run it through the fridge and back into the tank, don't see why it wouldn't work?

 

[crazyfish253]

i like the bottle idea! i thought about making one with a mini freezer i have laying around, take some plastic tubing and run it through the fridge and back into the tank, don't see why it wouldn't work?

It would work but the pull down would be little. It would work for a 10gl I bet

 

[akunochi]

Depends if you ran the line in direct contact the coolant line then the chilling capacity could be decent. It would be very close to a cooling system on a nuclear reactor. Well one of many types.

 

[Peppie]

would think the more line you had coiled in the fridge itself the cooler the water would come out. Like maybe 100 ft worth on the inside with a slow flow rate.Maybe 10-20gph. Im just guessing. I remember reading a thread on this once. I dont think it turned out as intended.

 

[returnofsid]

Yesterday, with our ac blasting, our tanks still climbed to 82. I started getting a bit nervous.

 

[Krish]

I'd imagine throwing frozen water bottles in your sump is something you'd have to be careful about doing where water level is concerned. Do you guys drop the water level in your sumps first before tossing in these bottles or do most of you have enough head room in your sump that you can just toss a frozen bottle or two in there and if your return pump failed/was turned off, it wouldn't overflow the sump? Depending on the size of the frozen bottles of water you add in there your sump level will come up so I wondered how many people fell into trouble here?

 

[crazyfish253]

I have mass head room in my sump so it works great. something to consider for sure. Freeze smaller water bottles.

 

[Krish]

I have mass head room in my sump so it works great. something to consider for sure. Freeze smaller water bottles.

Yea, on the tank in my post above, I didn't have much headroom at all for back siphon. So much so that I had to actually build another small sump compartment and plumb it into the existing sump to give me headroom. The fans in my case though on their own, did the trick. Alot more evaporation of course, but did the trick. The chiller came for peace of mind and as back up just incase.

 

[rainydave]

I only use 2 or 3 frozen Costco water bottles at a time. They don't add enough volume to overflow the sump if the power went out.

 

[NWDiver]

I have had a fair bit of experience making a poor man's chiller. The refridgerator/freezer idea is not new, and it really does not work very well at all. Plastic line to air conducts heat very poorly. If you put the line in chilled water it does better, but still not great. I had to use a Titanium line in (safe RV)antifreeze to get a good heat exchange. With that I was able to drop the temp in a 55gal to 50F during the summer.

-Todd

 

[akunochi]

would think the more line you had coiled in the fridge itself the cooler the water would come out. Like maybe 100 ft worth on the inside with a slow flow rate.Maybe 10-20gph. Im just guessing. I remember reading a thread on this once. I dont think it turned out as intended.

I'd have to go pull out some of my old "textbooks" from the schoolhouse where we discussed nuclear reactor sabotage etc but I believe there is a reason that the coolant line carrying the hot water is intertwined with the cooling coil itself. I think if you could get contact time with an ice cold coil then you could drop it a little, but not enough to justify the hacking of a mini fridge capable of holding beer.

 

[akunochi]

I have had a fair bit of experience making a poor man's chiller. The refridgerator/freezer idea is not new, and it really does not work very well at all. Plastic line to air conducts heat very poorly. If you put the line in chilled water it does better, but still not great. I had to use a Titanium line in (safe RV)antifreeze to get a good heat exchange. With that I was able to drop the temp in a 55gal to 50F during the summer.

-Todd

That's awesome except for the fact the cost of titanium pipe is 60% of buying a chiller anyways LOL.

 

[Krish]

Maybe I need to send PaulB the link to this thread. I don't know why but something is telling me he was in the process of making or has made his own DIY chiller. It would be so much easier to find out if I was at a computer. Will check it out later.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Pablo Mithels]

I had to break down and buy a chiller, really love the peace of mind that my corals are not cooking!

 

[sandra6500]

Just running to smaller clip on fans take down the water temp 5 degrees or so for me and I have MH. My AC kicks on if the place gets about 76 degrees so that helps too I'm sure, but without the fans (year round) my temp creeps to 82-83 year round. With the fans I can keep it to 77-78