Peltier devices and heatsinks

[Cacique]

I am in the process of figuring out a peltier cooler for my axolotl's tank. I use going to use half of the 70gal tetra filter and stick the cold heat sink in there to cool the water as it flows through, but I had a couple of questions.

Are all PC heat sinks aquarium safe? I would assume they are as I would believe they would be aluminum, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

My last question is, do I need to protect the peltier device from the water? I was thinking maybe of using silicone to close the gap in between the 2 heat sinks, but I'm not sure if that would affect it.

If you have any tips or experience you could share also I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[michael]

This doesn't really answer your question. I have a commercial chiller that has a peltier device. I drilled a hole in the side of an acrylic tank to mount it. It can also be mounted on a filter or the top of the tank. It really doesn't do much more than a fan and evaporative cooling will do.

If you are real handy I suppose a home made one will work. The larger flow through chillers seem to work much better than the probe type peltier devices.

 

[Cacique]

Thanks for the info. I found a peltier device cheap locally, and I have most if not all of the other materials on me already so I figured I wasn't really losing anything by trying. I had an idea of basically just a large filter with big heat sinks instead of media, no idea how it'll really work but might as well test it.

 

[Xtophr]

Some online sources indicate that aluminum isn't aquarium safe, some say it's OK. It looks like many, if not all, of the non-peltier chillers out there use a titanium heat exchanger.

 

[Cacique]

That's unfortunate, I'll have to figure something else to use instead of a heatsink then.