chiller
 

Cheapest and easiest way is comb receivership and bankruptcy auctions and find a chiller from a chinese restaurant that's gone belly-up. Probably can pick one up for a couple hundred bucks and they're commercial grade. Used for their Lobster and dungeness crab tanks, which are at about 50 degrees fahrenheit.

Yo, to avoid the cold sweaty tank issue use thick acrylic. I guarantee you it won't sweat.

Hmm... just a couple more thoughts here, regarding the tank sweating I'm aware it will happen and have no problem wiping it down whenever I wanna take a peek, although due to the small size I would feel comfortable building an acrylic tank myself a little later down the road, a project I've already looked into which sounds fun :)

and burger chow that's a great idea, I'll have to look into it, anyone from Calgary happen to know of any such auctions by chance? also still keeping an eye out for a thermoelectric cooler any electronics recyclers would be a possibility

also since these DIYs have a history of failing I was wondering if I could get around the duty cycles by pulling the cooling units from 2 coolers so that they could alternate the work and possibly act as each others back up giving me time to fix any problems, I still really like the idea of the peltier element, if I could work that into it perhaps the water cooler could act as the helper/backup

as for collection laws I have a secret weapon, my girlfriend is a coastal status first nation and has lots of family all the way from Vancouver to Prince Rupert, she can even collect abalone provided we don't have to dive for it