Cheap and easy tank cooling

Do you think that this would be a good idea for keeping the temps down for my FBNs? Josh mentioned above that this device would kill the humidity. There must be a way to use this idea and keep the humidity up as well. I use ice bottles constantly in my newt aquarium to keep the temps down and I have trouble keeping the temps consistent. This method seems like it would help me out a lot. And I do have the parts needed just lying around.
 
I ran into a problem!! I left the fan on for about 1 and half days, and when I went to feed my newts I notice a white film on top of the water. I don't use a filter so my water doesn't circulate. I'm thinking that the white film is dust that the fan pushed into the tank. It was easy to just run my fingers around the tank and skim it up, but I will have to either put a filter in or resort to using ice cubes instead!!
The main reason I don't want to use a filter is because I don't want to cut holes in my screen top. I don't want to use a submersible filter because it would just heat the water up. I guess I could use one of those air filters!!! Then I would only have to have a small hole in the top!!

JC
 
Kim, just provide a little surface movement with an airstone or something.
 
Ya, I was thinking about that. I thought I would bairy(sp) the air stone under my gravel.I have it pretty thick on one side of the tank right now. That should help circulate the water in the thick gravel!!!

Thanks
JC
 
you could try facing the fan outwards(or reversing its spin-i think you can do that by switching wires)-so that it pulls air away from the surface-this will still cool the set up-just remember that the cooling is evaporative-so you will have to change the water more often-the solids dissolved in it will build up because only pure water will evaporate off
 
Ok, What I've done is baried the air stone in about 3inches of gravel. Then I made a little gully where the air bubbles are coming up. That way it disturbs the water a little. I even put one of those switches that control how much air is going in!! I do't want to disturb the water too much and make my little guys mad!!

Now if I can stand the noise of the bubbles right behind my head, I'll be ok!! My tank is behind my couch so I can just turn and look at them!!!

And I am trying your suggestion Paris. I turned the fan over, so it will blow up!! I do water changes every other day, because of no filter!!

Thanks for all the help you guys!!
JC
 
YAY! here's a subject i have a bit of expertise in! There's one thing you really need to think of when looking at this as a "cooling" solution: you're limited by the temperature of the intake air. In this case, your room air is the intake air. Also, since you aren't ducting the air, you are really taking it from the area immediately over the tank. As we all know, heat rises so if you only have a screen covering and no hood or anything like that, all you may really be doing is recirculating a good percentage of the warm air leaving the tank. If you have perennial problems with overheating in the summer months, you may not fully fix it with just a fan if your tank is fairly far away from the room's conditioned air source. You may need to go as far as providing ducted air from a cooler part of the room.

Turning the fan over to exhaust the warm air may reduce but probably won't eliminate the dust issue since you'll still be pulling in air from the room.
 
John, I agree that this would not work for everyone.. and is ducting the air from only above the tank... But from what i have seen this method has been keeping the temp of my tank down several degrees from the room temp... For example, the other day it was over 25c outside and inside my house... My tank on the other hand with fans at only volts not on full blast was happily sitting at 13.4c The temps have gone down again and im leaving the fans off for a while..

I have also have a 'film' on top of the water but I also have a few floating plants that seem to break it up in the out put of my filter... This is not bothering me..

The only thing I would say is be very careful with the water quality.. in a week of having the fans on all the time I had to replace 6 liters of water that was lost due to the fans being on all the time and also had to change at least 4-5 liters because of the build up of the usual nitrates etc, and my weekly water change.
 
Kim, i'm not trying to pick a fight or anything, but if your room temperature was uniformly at 25°C, then it's quite impossible for your tank temp to have been 13.4°C. If this is the case then you've found some way to violate the first law of thermodynamics.
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you're tank is obviously in a well situated part of the room with an ambient temperature immediately around it much lower than 25°C.

The generic point is: get a very good feel for the environmental drivers that are causing any thermal issues before implementing a solution. Get temp/humidity readings not only in various locations within the tank (or viv), but around it as well. You may have a much simpler solution by changing the environmental drivers.
 
John, you seem to be forgetting that water loses energy (heat) through evaporation. The little water molecules are swimming around, and all the sudden one goes flying off as a gas molecule. It takes energy to make a state change. The more air you have blowing across the surface of the water, the more state changes you have (read, gas molecules leaving the water), taking the energy (heat) with it.

This explains why in military, desert situations, you can wet your sock, put your water bottle into it, and hang it under the humvee where the wind will blow across it, and cool your water to much lower than ambient temperatures.
 
Joan, latent cooling crossed my mind after i posted that but i never went back to my texts to review the process. Now i'm embarrassed because this is what i do for a living and i posted without fully investigating everything.
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But in my defense, i deal more often with radiative heat exchange.
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Still, this only works if you are using very dry air. And as Kim reports, there are numerous drawbacks to using it for cooling a body of water that requires fairly tight control of dissolved solids.

If this were my problem to solve, I would use the latent cooling as basically a chiller system. Run this cooled water through coils in the tank using a submersible pump. This way you aren't concerned about the quality of the water you are actively cooling. It's not as efficient as directly cooling the tank because you are limited in the sink temperature you can achieve in the chilled water.
 
Well I have the fans and I have drawn out my master plan. However now I need to find a piece of plexiglass that can be cut as I "desire" lol

I ordered fans from www.bigalsonline.com that are for cooling light fixtures. They already have a nice cord with a connector. "I'm a programmer not an electrician" (old school star trek humor sorry).

Since I have a glass hood I am replacing it with plexiglass and mounting the fans in the back half of the lid that I rarely remove. I want to drill it full of small holes except where the light fits, and of course I will have to cut out where my filter hoses are.

So far we have only had one day over 80 and my central air can handle keeping the house at 70.
But the heat will be here soon so I am hoping I can get my act together and get this project finished in the next 2 weeks. I will post photos when my mission is complete
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Kim - I finally have a prototype built. The 1/8" plexi glass was only $13 and the 1/4" is $36. So I thought some practice was in order.

The prototype is not quite strong enough to not sag so it is reinforced with the yard stick and a connector that came with an aquarium top I have.

There is just a round hole cut the size of the fan blade. I am still able to use the glass front piece to open the tank. So far it is working great.

I was able let the house temperature rise by 5 degrees. My a/c does not have to work as hard and my power bill should not be "quite" as bad. It has been from 90 to 100+ degrees here for a month or so. And we have more of it to come.

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For the 1/4" top I need a better saw. Cutting plexi glass is not as easy as it sounds. Since one fan is doing enough cooling I can have the 2nd fan I bought to use on the lid for another axolotl tank.
 
<u>ya great idea now when your newt trys to escape hell get sliced lol............ well i thought it was funney</u>
 
That could be true if they were newts... but its on an axolotl tank.
 
that look great cynthia! Itsalways hit and miss with these sorts of things! How many degrees it is keeping your tank down by?
 
Kim - The temperature was nearing 74 degrees in the tank. After adding the fan it is now 67.
 
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  • Katia Del Rio-Tsonis:
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    sorry I am having a hard time trying to upload the pictures- I have them saved on my hard drive... any suggestions-the prompts here are not allowing for downloads that way as far as I can tell. Thanks
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    Katia Del Rio-Tsonis: sorry I am having a hard time trying to upload the pictures- I have them saved on my hard... +1
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