Dumb or smart chiller?

Ok im going to go for it tomorrow. I have a 3x3 old mini fridge so no waste and i got it for free just no where to hide it. At my work we have a 2 foot by 1 foot mini fridge which would be 1000x better but hey that's at work.

 

Ok so my filter is 2" taller than my mini fridge. So i went and bought 8 feet of new tubing to run it through in spirals like that one dude did. It cooled the water + tubes ALOT but one big problem, my filter was not strong enough to keep a decent flow.

So tomorrow i have two REALLY small pumps im going to put one inside the tank and pump it into a Bucket of water inside the mini fridge and one inside the bucket pumping back up into the tank. I will see if its enough to cool it down 8 degreese. Will take pictures tomorrow.

 

So this is what i went with or ended up making.





I just set it up and i have had it running for about 10 min now and there is maybe a 1-2 degree drop. Not sure if its working well or not.

 

Hope it keeps on working good, have you put any thought to how you can set up a thermostat on the pump or something so it would only be running when necessary?

 

I had it the pumps and fridge on a timer with lights beacuse thats when it really needs it. To bad i got raped today by it. Once the pumps shut off the hose sucking from the fish tank made its own sucking cycle and drain 10 gallons into the fridge onto my carpet to down stairs. Haha

 

yeah you'd have to have a way to stop the siphon or it'll do that, DAMN GRAVITY!!

 

Refrigerator's are designed and finned to remove heat molecules far more differently then a chiller is designed . Good luck with it ..

 

crazy question but, what are chiller good for? other the keep water temps under 70 for cold water fish and coral

 

im no expert by any means, but one thing i do know about chillers is that the less flow you have through them the colder the water will be because of more contact time with coils, also if you are using vinyl tubing then you want the thin stuff possible,also i dont know if it would help really but you might consider insulating the return lines. just my 2cents, good luck

 

I think a better way to set that up is get some really thin vinyl tubing and create as big a coil as you can fit in the fridge, instead of having a water reservoir at the bottom of the fridge. Making a large coil with thin tubing creates a larger surface area to be cooled before it hits the tank, so you can possibly end up with lower temps. Insulating the return is also a good idea.