Complete Newbie to Chillers - All help appreciated!

[Petersgirl]

Hello fellow axxie fans!

I was wondering about chillers. I have a four foot, 30 gallon tank (much wider than it is tall) with four axolotls inside. One recently got sick (I suspect she is very constipated, so she will likely sort herself out in time), and I noticed my temperature is quite high for this tank - it averages 23 degrees, and I'm not happy about this at all. I can water change it with fresh water and it drops to 18 degrees, but by the evening it has usually gone up again. This tank is across the back wall, so I suspect this may be why it heats up.

I tried a fan but it recently stopped working, and I have tried frozen bottles but they don't seem to last very long, so I've come to the conclusion I need a chiller. Here are some completely newbie questions about them that I'd like to know:

1) How do chillers work? Are they an all-in-one unit or do you need to buy a separate unit for an external filter?
2) Which is the cheapest unit on the market that you know of? My LFS is quoting me in the £300s for a decent one.
3) In your experience, do chillers do the business or do you still need to keep an eye on temp? Did they seem to make your axxies happier?

It seems to me that chillers are the Holy Grail of axxie-keeping.

 

[KCKme]

Hello,

There are a variety of chillers on the market. And yes for a decent one 300GBP sounds about right - I paid about $420 USD for mine. Chillers sit in between the tank and the filters. Most chillers require the water to be filtered. So far the best setup I've found is to install a canister filter in conjunction with the chiller. The canister filter moves the water from the aquarium, filters it, then pumps it to the chiller for chilling - the chiller moves it back to the aquarium.

The nice thing about a chiller - they do a great job at maintaining the temperatures. Better than the ice probes (for your size tank) and definitely better than ice packs and fans.

Hope this helps some.