Cheap Homemade Chiller

My aircon will be contantly blowing on the tank this summer. So it will be nice and cool when my axie moves in.

(P.S) Hiya Lizzy. Im from the Rocko area
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Hi Luke, aircon will be great.I have a wood fire so I'm off to make a chiller for winter,I'm afraid the inside of the house will be too warm for Frankie.The cooler temps of late have helped.
 
Frankie....what a perfect name for a axolotl
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I gave up trying to work out ways to keep them cold for the summer, so i ended up taking them out of the tank and put them in a tub on wheels and kept them in the bathroom where it was cooler. it was kinda weird takin a bath and they would just stare at me.
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Frankie has a new roomie! She now has to share with Johnnie a 4 inch black axie he is sooo cute.I have goldfish in one of my bathrooms right next to the loo...Romeo and Juliet inspired..lol...allright as long as your not P%%S shy that is! No bath so just closing the shower curtain helps if you feel their little eyes on you..haha..The goldfish in the lounge love to watch my son play PS2 games block their view and they go spak...
 
Uh, am useless at DIY, I don't understand how I'm supposed to do that cooler. But do you mean by aircon? Some sort of air-conditioning unit? I have seen some electrical heaters/coolers, that would blow out hot/cold air (2 settings). I was thinking one of those may be suitable. Only thing is, as they're electronic, it would be very dangerous to have it so close to water. I don't want to come home one day and find my axie electrocuted...Any other suggestions will be really appreciated
 
Help! Somebody answer please! Otherwise a beatiful, lovely axie lady will be in heat distress sooon, as summer is coming
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With that DIY air-cooler, where does the tubing go? I can see from the pic 2 are put throug to the esky. What about the other ends of tube? To the water? Where is the powerhead? Am so confused.
Can somebody smarter help us?
Many thanks in advance
 
Ok, great! I am starting to understand it much better now. So one end of the tube goes to filter and then through the ice box, and other end comes to the tank bringing in the same water back, but a lot cooler. I see. I was so confused, didn't understand that circulation. My tank is 50 gallons. How long does this method keep the water cool? Maybe 12 hours?
 
WOAAAA!!! more than 200 lts, that´s lot of water.
Try not to pump too much water, i guess 100lts/h would be more than fine, cause in 2 hours you´ll be drugging the full tank. and, the temperature fluctuation you have is low comparing with my tank (25 lts, but i´m considering gettin a new), this will keep (I guess/Hope) temperature 10 hours with a fluctuation of 2 degrees, depending the temperature of the room. But the bottle only will be iced 6 hours, i guess. I`m now studying to get some numbers to make a system to deal with the temperature of the tank.
I hope get some conclusions
Good luck
 
my tank is about 50gal, and we managed to keep it cool right through summer with this setup. you want to get as close as possible to the same weight of water and salt in the icebox. the temp drops remarkably quickly- maybe 30min. We never managed to get it below 18C tho. How long it will last depends on the quality ice box you get and how hot a day it is. I think at the height of summer we were able to maintin it with ice from the freezer (we froze big chunks of ice too) and just put them in daily. It took a couple of big bags of ice which we bought to get it started. Note that the ice will melt because salt water has a much lower freezing point, but it is still colder than normal ice. My pump is 100gal per hour. We had no problems with temp fluctuations.
 
cheryl, would you mind trayin to low the pump, in order to drug all the water of your tank y 1 or 2 hours?, then,put only the amount of water needed just to keep the "serpentin" (or whatever it calls) submerged. And put in the ice box frozen bottles or medicin frozen Gels, so you dont add more water.
I just want you to do this to see what happen with temperature, cause i think it will reach a lower temp, spend less ice and time; less the pump works, less heat generates, less water revolution (make water heating) and water stay a little bit more time in the Ice box)
Thanks a Lot
and thanks again
Pablo
 
i have no idea what you mean pablo. What do you mean by "drugging" the tank. less gal/hr is just going to mean less push, and i doubt the slower pump would have the power to do it. Do you mean draining the tank? i dont want to drain my tank- i like the water in it!
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or do you mean the water in the ice box?
 
jajaja sorry, my english is horrible.
less gal/h, and less water in the ice box, necesary only to cover where the water pass through.
bye
 
with 100gal/hr the filter only just manages with enough push. the tube fills the whole ice box to maximise chilling time. more ice will take longer to melt than a small amount.
 
im confused im having cooling problems as well are you talking about chilling the water as it leaves the tank filter can you chill a tank filter the water passes through the lead in tube too fast to have time to chill
i have another question if you just add ice it causes clorine in the water what about if the ice is 24 hrs old thank you fran
 
i had many coils through the icebox to maximise the time it was in contact with the ice- it is a 70lt box so the water came out on the other side quite cold. From what i understand adding ice directly to the water causes too many temp fluctuations.
 
were you using a canaster filter mine is the fuval 104 i wonder if it has the strength to push the water through the box i tried asking hagan and they dont answer did you use something else to push the water through thank you for answering my questions my axies are so much happier in cooler water fran
 
people, change the concept of the chiller. What about thinking that the chiller idea is not to low temperature? The idea of the chiller is to keep the tank temp. and that´s not the same. For example, cheryl have the perfect chiller, but she´s pumpin to much water, and I´m sure that the temp inside the chiller is lower than 18ºC, and has 4 meters of tubing, that´s too good. but i guess you also have 2 meters tubbing to return the water to the tank, So, I suggest to cover those meters like the picture.
Also, big tanks have small temp fluctuation,so i don´t think temp changes in 30 minutes.
So you need less ice, and less pumping power to keep temperature once it´s low.
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