Cali Kid Corals

Do it yourself air to water cooler brain storming.

That is an interesting idea on combining the chilled-food-feeder and aquarium chiller.
If you have a fridge anyway....
It would not be hard to put a long roll of PEX in the fridge, and run that off of a pump controlled by Apex.

We have a full fridge in the garage as it is, for overflow.
I wonder what the wife-acceptance-factor would be on using part of that for the fish tank.:eek:
 
rygh said:
That is an interesting idea on combining the chilled-food-feeder and aquarium chiller.
If you have a fridge anyway....
It would not be hard to put a long roll of PEX in the fridge, and run that off of a pump controlled by Apex.

We have a full fridge in the garage as it is, for overflow.
I wonder what the wife-acceptance-factor would be on using part of that for the fish tank.:eek:
Click to expand...
Oh, the dreaded WAF issue...
 
rygh said:
I ran one of those when I had a smaller 50G tank. Worked so-so.
I think it was icecap. No longer being built.

A normal sized mini-fridge uses a compressor to pump heat, which is a lot more energy efficient.
Only the really tiny mini-fridges (usually labeled as car coolers and such) use a peltier.
Click to expand...
Yeah I assumed cost was a factor here, hence the peltier suggestion :)
 
rygh said:
That is an interesting idea on combining the chilled-food-feeder and aquarium chiller.
If you have a fridge anyway....
It would not be hard to put a long roll of PEX in the fridge, and run that off of a pump controlled by Apex.

We have a full fridge in the garage as it is, for overflow.
I wonder what the wife-acceptance-factor would be on using part of that for the fish tank.:eek:
Click to expand...

The fridge stays about 37 degrees. Really the only way to make the fridge/chiller viable is using metal. Metal is a great heat exchanger whereas plastic is an insulator.
 
agreed!
I was gifted a 420/2 and ran it with an aqualogic controller on one of my systems.
It worked well, reducing temp by a few degrees. But it has a huge top off requirement

But I’ve thought about creating a similar unit using a 32 gallon brute can and some fans
Could be done...
 
Kensington Reefer said:
agreed!
I was gifted a 420/2 and ran it with an aqualogic controller on one of my systems.
It worked well, reducing temp by a few degrees. But it has a huge top off requirement

But I’ve thought about creating a similar unit using a 32 gallon brute can and some fans
Could be done...
Click to expand...

hmm. Well I could try a standard 12 inch box fan above a 32 gallon brute. Use a small capacity sicce pump then measure how much the fan cools down the water . If it turns out to be a viable sollution I can program the apex to switch on and off the pump/fan.
 
TurboReef said:
The fridge stays about 37 degrees. Really the only way to make the fridge/chiller viable is using metal. Metal is a great heat exchanger whereas plastic is an insulator.
Click to expand...
Using plastic has been done; one has to search archives in RC for a DIY chiller using a mini fridge and plastic tubing coiled; the threads have to be way over a decade old; I’d say 15+ years. Chris/Chicken on RC made his natural gas heater since electric power was climbing stratospherically (still going up)
I can’t recall whom but that person made a DIY chiller using a mini fridge and lots of tubing.
Coming the end of college semester, right before summer break, for some reason lots of mini fridges show up for free or just left on the streets (bulky items kids or parents might not want to deal with hauling anymore)
Some people were wondering about Titanium tubing/coil but cost was prohibitive and vs the price of a new chiller, made no sense. Thin wall plastic can only insulate so much that is worth looking into making one in my opinion, even better if you already have a fresh food fridge dedicated for an aquarium where you don’t have to calculate the WaGAF (wife and girlfriend sometimes). I think is an interesting DIY project worthy of looking into a tandem setup with the fresh food feeder. Three birds one shot...
 
DIY is great and making complicated solutions to simple problems is fine if you are doing it for entertainment. But fans over the water for evaporative cooling with a generous ATO are the right answer here.
 
xcaret said:
Using plastic has been done; one has to search archives in RC for a DIY chiller using a mini fridge and plastic tubing coiled; the threads have to be way over a decade old; I’d say 15+ years. Chris/Chicken on RC made his natural gas heater since electric power was climbing stratospherically (still going up)
I can’t recall whom but that person made a DIY chiller using a mini fridge and lots of tubing.
Coming the end of college semester, right before summer break, for some reason lots of mini fridges show up for free or just left on the streets (bulky items kids or parents might not want to deal with hauling anymore)
Some people were wondering about Titanium tubing/coil but cost was prohibitive and vs the price of a new chiller, made no sense. Thin wall plastic can only insulate so much that is worth looking into making one in my opinion, even better if you already have a fresh food fridge dedicated for an aquarium where you don’t have to calculate the WaGAF (wife and girlfriend sometimes). I think is an interesting DIY project worthy of looking into a tandem setup with the fresh food feeder. Three birds one shot...
Click to expand...

Chris AKA H20 Engineer also had a thread that was very informative. I played with geo cooling since I had a basement that stayed ~50F. My issue was to pump it back up, the heat generated by the pump offset any gains. I had a head of around 18' when all said and done. The PEX did a decent job of thermal transfer, but I bet the setup would have worked if I used Ti coils, not PEX.
 
You may not want a super efficient heat transfer.
That would make the inside of the fridge heat up quickly, ruining the food that is in it.
 
rygh said:
You may not want a super efficient heat transfer.
That would make the inside of the fridge heat up quickly, ruining the food that is in it.
Click to expand...
That would be *if* I was posting to the effect of using a fridge for food (mine post was about geo-cooling). If I used a fridge, I wouldn't have had the head issue with the MAG12, thus perhaps a less effective heat transfer would have worked.

But that also depends on the feed/food and preservation. Some feeds aren't effected like others and can take a temp spike now and then. Some you'll use before temp spikes become an issue. I know a little about feed preservation for marine aquaria :D
 
TurboReef said:
I want to make a do it yourself chiller of sorts. I ordered four Noctua 140mm NF-A14 Industrial 24v fans.

my plan is to pump water through a closed loop system and have a fan blow on a heat sink.

my first choice was copper but it’s incredibly toxic to inverts.

is aluminum safe ? The heatsink would have to be something they conducts heat very well. I can use pex or really anything else for the rest.

I may also do some version of this using a mini fridge and some sort of heatsink in the fridge to
Maximize cooling.
Click to expand...
Aluminum is toxic as well.

Stainless 316Ti would work with saltwater but steel is a very poor heat conductor.

The best resistance against corrosion in saltwater has Titanium (aside from Gold, Platinum, and other insanely expensive precious or rare earth metals)

But all that really just makes sense with a heat pump like the ones you find in refrigeration chiller. If you just plan on using fans, an evaporation chiller would be far more effective and cheaper. The easiest is just to point a fan to an open surface on the tank or in the sump. It's what I use and it works well enough.
 
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