New to Canreef
 

Great site guys! I have been on ReefCentral since my salt beginnings, and wish that I knew about this sooner! Anyone know of a cheap chiller DIY?

Welcome to Canreef! :cool: And .. uh .. sorry no I sure don't. Except for the fans on the water surface trick (which does work surprisingly well)

Thanks, Tony

Hey Rich ... I have seen a few DIY projects for chillers but other than actually buying one already built they all seem too finicky to rely on ... as Tony said the fans work great and can be rigged to turn on at a certain temp ( RC or Reefs.org has a DIY for that ) ... also last summer we got central air and that solved everything ... now you might be thinking that it is excessive but think of what a decent chiller costs and subtract that from a AC unit and the AC unit looks pretty good.

Welcome to Canreef :mrgreen:

Thanks Steve, I think I might just have to "Turbo flow" my canopy. The temp above the water surface surpasses 100 F and my magnificent anemone is hating it. Water temp fluctuates almost 8 F /day!

Do you have fans in your canopy right now? What is your lighting?

Just a thought,if you built the canopy with a 2 or 3 inch dia tube running through from end to end and installed a fan at one end to draw out the air being warmed from the tank,will that not cool things down,or is that not practical?Basically, the tube absorbes any heat and the fan cools it down.

Jim

Almost foregot,WELCOME :mrgreen:

reply
 

Cool concept Jim, kinda like a radiator with air instead of liquid.

Welcome..... :lol:

Yup, welcome. There could almost be a DIY club here...

:smile:

Thanks for the welcome and the ideas. The canopy that I built does not have fans yet because I'm still in the market to find a power supply for my LED's and fans. I like the idea about the cooling tube, but I think that the tubing material (abs, pvc...) will insulate the temperature differential too much. I like the idea to cut down on evap, though. I would try it if I had room in my canopy that wouldn't interfere with the lights (210 watts of 420nm and 10KK flourescents). Rich.