Re: cooling down your water

[Eric McGlohon <eric at dekard_com>]

On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 03:09:02AM -0700, S. Hieber wrote:
> Just thinking out loud: This might or might not be more complicated
> than float switches & sumps that run as part of your aquarium's water
> system.  You can cool a "tray" of water through which you run a tube
> that carries the aquarium water.  The aquarium water can be cooled
> without excelerated evaporation.  Any evaporation occurs in the cooling
> tray water instead of hte aquarium or sump water.  The cooling tray
> water can be replenished once day or once a month, etc. depending on
> it's depth.  You wouldn't need valves or precise flows to maintain tank
> water levels.  You could even have glass covers on your aquarium to
> minimize evaporation of the aquarium water.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "cooling tray."  There are
some DIY chillers out there that coil a bunch of tubing in a
refrigerator and pump water from the aquarium into it and back out.
AFAIK it works, but not as well as a regular reef chiller would.

Check these out: 
http://www.aloha.net/~hqf/indexdonschiller.htm
http://www.reefs.org/library/diy/diy13.html
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~cap/raid/chillers/diy/

Do a google search on "diy aquarium chiller".

-Eric