How I Cool My Tank

Reef Breeders · Jul 12, 2012

This summer I got tired of keeping the whole house ac on, it only got my tank down to about 80, and a noisy fan barely got it to 79, plus I had to work double time to get my ato full. Since a chiller for my 150 gallon system would cost in the neighbor hood of $700, I went and bought an ac window unit. It ran me $99 and took 10 minutes to install. I put it on my Apex with the knobs turned to the highest setting. Whenever the temp goes above 79.5 degrees, it cools the whole room and brings it down in minutes. The room never gets hot enough to heat the tank above 80, and the unit barely has to run, so long as the door is closed. The temp has been rock solid stable for the past couple days, never below 79.3, never above 79.6. I will post pics of the unit, I believe it is a 2500 BTU

Steven R · Jul 12, 2012

Nice I wish I thought of that before I bought my chiller.

Reef Breeders · Jul 12, 2012

Steven R said:
Nice I wish I thought of that before I bought my chiller.

I have been trying to just use a fan, but it is 90 degrees outside right now, and was in the hundreds last week, so I needed an upgrade.

revhtree · Jul 12, 2012

Awesome! Good idea.

Steven R · Jul 12, 2012

anemonekeeper said:
I have been trying to just use a fan, but it is 90 degrees outside right now, and was in the hundreds last week, so I needed an upgrade.

Mine is on my frag tank in the garage and I live in Florida so it is hot year round my garage is around 90 to 95 most the time. But my Artica 1/10 is doing real well for my 120g it stays right at 80 and no lower then 79 my other two tanks are inside so I do not need a chiller on them. My garage has a AC but it would be way more expensive to run it. I was lucky enough to find a used chiller on here for 375 shipped. Thank god for Reef 2 Reef classified's LOL.

wysiwyg · Jul 12, 2012

i did similar for my tank got a 10000btu ac that didnt work any more it was only 3 yrs old opened it up found a wire that had shorted out and burned its connection re sotered it and it keeps my tank at 77 degrees even when it was 100plus here in wi

Steelerfan747 · Jul 12, 2012

Pretty good idea, will keep that in mind if I ever decide to turn of central a/c unit

pickupman66 · Jul 12, 2012

I have an older 1/4 hp chiller for my 180 system. it is located in the garage with my sump. the garage is insulated but gets well into the upper 90's in teh summer. especially with this heat (almost all of june above 100*) we have been having. my tank has been rock solid on the controller at 78.5 with this chiller. it takes it about 2.5 hours to cool from 79.1 to 78 (thats the hystersis for my medusa controller), then it takes 2 hours for the tank to go back to 79.1. not bad with my LED's and 230 gallons of water. with my halides it would run for much longer only to be off for less than an hour. we keep the house at 74.

here are the last few days in a graph. I love the consistency of the controllers.

Russellaqua · Jul 12, 2012

That's an ingenious idea, and it does double duty! Can't get any better than that.

stylaster · Jul 12, 2012

Nice i did the same thing, I have my tank in a 'fish room' in my house and added a window ac unit. Even though the house has central air it wasnt enough to help keep the tank cool