Check out my sexy DIY chiller

[Jhoehlein]

Try not to laugh too hard, it's been keeping the tank at a comfortable 78 regardless of the ambient temperature in my non-air-conditioned apartment. JBJ Arctica arrives tomorrow but this beast has been keeping the reef cool for the past two weeks. Meanwhile my evaporation has gone from 5 gallons every three weeks to 1.5 gallons a day...

 

[oh207]

Awesome!

I get the same amount of evaporation with a fan over the DT and one over the sump. And I always wonder with all that evaporation where does the water goes? I don't see any cloud formations in my living room and it doesn't rain in my living room. :-?

 

[trinimaddness]

Use it as long as possible even when your chiller comes. My chiller makes my living room hot and my bill hotter.

 

[vincent]

Looks cool but funny! Smart guy

 

[savage]

That's what we call a ghetto chiller...Lol...

 

[homegrowncichlid]

A 4 inch fan cut into the hood would work just well.
I have one which exhaust hot air out of my T5 fixture, but in the past I use to pull air from out of the tank, until I saw salt crystals were corroding the fan and the fixture, so I flipped in around to blow hot air onto the tank and over the water. Much to my surprise, though its hot exhaust air, it cooled my tank down even better then before.


So the 2 theories I have,
1. Blowing air across the water surface is effective.
2. The hot air probably has a lower relative humidity, though cold air conditioned air would too. I'm still working why this works, out in my head and all I can think of is cold air would work better. Anyway this lowers my temp about 4F


In the past when I had a closed cabinet with sump. using a 4 inch fan (with no hot light fixtures), blowing into the sump lowered the temp about 8F and it was so effective, I had to turn it off, since the water level in the sump was dropping too much per day.

 

[saltwaterinbrooklyn]

Why don't you have an air conditioner? Lol you like the heat?

 

[homegrowncichlid]

At my old place where I had the closed cabinet, I didn't have AC, so the water temp was around 86F, and the fan brought it down to 78 or even lower if I kept it going.


My current apartment does have AC, but I find that if I close the windows, with all the heat my computer (1000W power supply), my electronics and lighting, nevermind the eleven T5 bulbs running over my tanks, my room temp is 78 to 80F.
I rely on fans.


BTW with the chiller, (if I had one) it will raise the over all room temperature, so even though the water is cooler, the room will be warmer. Just like your kitchen with fridge, as it is adding (whatever horsepower) of heat. You'll need to treat it like an air conditioner and have it vent out somewhere, or somehow keep it in another room, or better yet outside your window under the shade.


Personally I find chillers about as useful as one of those room air conditioners which only have 1 vent hose. Cold air does blow out, but the design flaw of it is that heat is radiating off the hose, so overall there is a zero sum gain in coldness, but a large gain in heat.