Temp is very very warm, running out of ideas!

Yesterday I met with a guy off Craigslist who was selling a few things (RO unit, coral frags, and a reef keeper) and he had bought a mini refrigerator off of craigslist for $30 or something and placed it next to his tank. Then he cut two holes in the side of it and led the tanks outtake into the refrigerator where there was probably 4 feet of hosing coiled to maximize surface area and then from there the hosing went into the sump underneath the aquarium.

I thought that was so clever! Not to mention he stored his aquarium supplies in the fridge too (and of course some beer)! And all you could see were two small pvc pipes connecting the fridge to the back of the aquarium base; quite discreet! And of course fridges make it very easy to adjust the temperature based on season and if it's still not enough, just get more coiled hosing in the fridge.

 

All that he achieved was copying a chiller, albeit a very very inefficient one.

 

Here in Houston we call 100+ degree weather Summer. We call 99+ degree weather spring and fall.

Other than fans, there is only so much you can do. The thing with fans though is that the more surface area it blows across, the more effective it is. Run fans across both your tank and your sump. Open any cabinets and let the thing breathe. It's also important to remember it takes time for temps to go up and the less time the temp is in a dangerous range, the less danger. When your temprature drops at night, keep working to lower it. If your room temp is a 75 at night, but your tank, which stores water well, never gets below 80, it doesn't have far to go to hit trouble the next day.

Bringing it down to room temp at night is going to be a huge help during the day.

I had no idea there were places you could live without an A/C unit...

Good luck.

 

buy a dehumidifier which is about 150 and keep fans on top of the tank that way the water evaporations is more efficient and then keep your top off going.

 

my 2 6" clip on fans blowing right under my halides keep my tank at a perfect 80. no matter what temp it is outside or even inside. the other day my ac wasnt keeping up and the house got to 82. The tank with halides on for 5 hours was still 80.6

 

well, i believe copying a chiller was the idea in this case... if you are to compare prices from a chiller, and prices from what he did.. and both did the job.. i'd say its fairly efficient.. quite clever actually

 

Less costly option: insert the hose coil in a bucket of water and stick it in the freezer. Once it's frozen, attach pump and insert the ends into the tank.

 

Mini fridges do not work well since for one, the compressors are not desingmed for continous duty and two plastic tubing is a very poor conductor of heat and cold so does not work as a heat exchanger.
The pump needed to push water through this long coild of tubing draws enery and expels heat so sort of defeats the purpose negating the cooling effect.

This subject has been discussed at great length in literally hundreds of threads on every popular reef forum and the results are the same, its not cost effective nor efficient. Look up the laws of thermodynamics and see how many BTU's it takes to either heat or cool even a gallon of water only a single degree and you will see why it does not work. Its just not as easy as it seems like it should be, otherwise we would all be doing it and chillers would be a dime a dozen.

 

This is fairly cheap....
coolworks ice probe, coolworks microchiller

 

They are good for 2-3 degrees drop in about 10 gallons of water is all, they claims are inflated. A $10 clip on fan works much better.