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Re: cooling down your water



Eric McGlohon said:

> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "cooling tray." 

I mant any handy watertight open-top box with a large amount of surface
area (at least roughly equal to the surface area of the top of your
aquarium) -- so this could be a cake pan, rubbermaid container, etc.  

Evaporative cooling, using the aquarium water as the evaporant,
presents an issue of maintaining aquarium water level.  It can also
present a problem for plants that you are trying to grow through and
above the water surface -- the fan blowing on them can overdry them.

One possible way around that issues is to evaporate a different tank of
water, one in which the water level is not so important.  You transfer
the aquarium's heat to the other (cooling) tank via tubing.  This other
tank could be much cheaper than buying a refrigerator or chiller,
undoubtedly less effective, but possibly cheaper and more energy
efficient.  The noise of the fan, the unsightlyness of the fan and
cooling tray could be in a different room than the aquarium.

If you want a really simple for a small amount of cooling, put a large
room fan, at low speed, in the room, point the fan at the tank, leave
the tank covered.  This provides enough coolilng for some folks with
minor overheating problems.

Running chillers is expensive, usually more watts than your lights.  a
1500 BTU/hr. unit runs at roughly 1/6 horsepower or about 3 amp or
about 350 watts.  Not to mention the initial outlay of about $700 for a
unit that size.  Large units are more energy efficient but the range is
roughly 5-10 BTUs for each watt/hr. of use (based on Aqua Logic's
tables). 

BTW, re peltier devices.  The address for the manufactuer of the
IceProbe is given by many search engines as 

http://www.coolworks.simplenet.com/ 

but that is no longer a valid address for this firm.  The address is
actually this:

http://www.coolworksinc.com/

Be cool,
Scott H.

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