chiller ???

[straydog]

If i were to add a heat sink directly to the back or bottom of my tank held in place with glue or a bracket and put a fan or 2 blowing on the fins would this cool my tank sort of in the same manor as an iceprobe chiller without the drilling ?

 

[redfishbluefish]

Interesting concept! So what you are suggesting is to take something like aluminum heat sink finned plate and attach it to the tank. Like this stuff:

You would want to use thermal adhesive to help with heat transfer. And the glass is going to act as an insulator. I'm willing to bet someone could do the math on this to figure out if it would work. It's been too long, but something about joules / mass X change in temp. And aluminum has a good specific heat for sucking out that heat. I'm following along for the more scholar ones to chime in.

 

[Skydvr]

No. The iceprobe uses a thermal electric chiller. Pass a current through it, one side heats up, the other gets cold. You need to pull the heat away from the hot side to not burn it up.

The aluminum might be a degree or two cooler than ambient, but you aren't really going to see any difference. You would be better off using one of those ans to ow across the surface of the water to take advantage of evaporative cooling. This will knock the tank temp down a few degrees below ambient. You will accelerate your evaporation considerably. If you have a small tank and no auto top off method, you may cause issues with salinity swings.

 

[Skydvr]

Can't seem to edit the post from my phone.

The second paragraph should say that while the aluminum may be a degree or two below ambient you will not see a difference in your tank.