Question about water pumps.

[jhonny]

Hello again.

i have a question about water pumps.
at this moment i have 2 golden albino axies living in my 110 liter (29 gallon) tank.
and with the last heatwave, even with 4 computer fans blowing on the water, the temperature of my water went up to about 24°c (75,2F)
and i got a little worried that this isnt good for my axies so i sought out a sollution.
my girlfriends parrents where kind enough to donate me their old caravan fridge
which i now plan to use to cool my water.
to make it a bit easier, instead of explaining my plan i sketched it out roughly.
and words of advice or ideas would be most appreciated.

and lastly, if this where to work. how much volume should my pump be able to move seeing i have to cool 110 liters or 29 gallons of water.

 

[tusken raider]

It should work but there a number of things to consider, will the water we able to be cooled quickly enough while it travels through the fridge to your desired temperature? you could increase the cooling by having coils of tubing to increase surface area for cooling, but the pump needs to be able to cope with this.

Is your pump going to be able (strong enough) to pump the water through the fridge and back up out into the tank again? is the pump you plan on using your filter or a power head?

If your heat waves are only short you could just go with the ice bottles on rotation to cool your tank, it could be alot less effort.

Just give it a try and see how it turns out DIY is always plenty of fun

 

[jhonny]

i knew i pretty much nailed the basic idea. but logical thinking only gets you so far.
i was hoping to find someone who had already done something like this in order to get some real numbers in water pump strenght etc..
but when thinking about it last night i figured that wouldnt be easy, seeing nobody knows how long the tube will be at this time.
i already figured out the tubing would have to coil around something, but i hadent quite figured out what material to use for that. and how to make the water flow slow enough for it to actually have an effect.
afterall, its still only a caravan fridge.. i know it gets cold.. but thats pretty much all the info i have.

edit: i used ice bottles over night. but they melt away in 5 minutes.
i just have way to much water to be cooled with bottles.
problem is i cant have my fans blowing on it 24/7, they sound like a jetplane taking off..
i dont care about that, i can sleep trough a bombing of the nazi's.. my girlfriend on the other hand..

 

[lea]

Could you put the hose that is in the fridge in a bucket of really cold or even frozen water? You could have a lot of hose curled so the water has enough time to cool down............just a thought. I had a hose run into a freezer for a while with those water crystals around it and frozen bottles of water on top.....it was ok i guess. I just used my filter as my pump.

 

[jhonny]

so, i'm home again for 2 weeks. i can finally start this plan up.
still no answer on how strong my pump has to be..

 

[tusken raider]

^^ It depends on how much water you have to pump, and how quickly you want it to move through the system i guess, also consider the height the water has to travel, the more height the stronger pump you will need. Look at different pumps or power heads to see which will suit when you have drawn up measurements ect.

 

[Mr Poseidon]

Get the strongest water pump you can afford. that way if your DIY chiller isnt working well enough you can add more tubing inside to alllow for more time to cool down then you just have to turn your pump up!