Teeny Tiny Chiller?
Anyone have a teeny tiny chiller? My poor little Nano tank at work is suffering heat stroke. No AC in the building and it gets hot hot hot in here. Poor thing with only +-3 gal can get pretty warm. Any suggestions past "Put a fan on it" or "Bag of ice" would be great. Bob

Is the MH on it?

its the same light as the one i got from you. in this circumstance i believe that the dorm fridge chiller would work. the question is.. do you have one back behind the desk in bobland? 50' of 1/4" tubing from ace and a small pump and you're solid.

A small fan (80-120mm) will help but you'll probably evap off 1/2 gal to 1 gal a day and that will spike up salinity significantly unless you've got a ATO (auto top-off) system. Also fans only help if room temp isn't too hot or too humid to begin with. I've got one on a temperature controller on my tank and I loose about 1+ gal of make up day from the top of a 55 gal when its on. Plus, if you forget and leave it on you'll be battling your heater to keep the tank from going too far south and your evaporation rates keep going.... Thus the controller... ;) You could try bags of ice but that could be disasterous IMHO if unattended: 1) could drop temps too fast, 2) Ice bag could float towards a coral and shock/kill it, 3) bag could stop filtration and... :(. If you are serious about keeping it there over the summer (i.e. in hot environment) I'd seriously consider getting a small thermoelectric chiller. They use some serious electricity but work great for small volumes. I've always wanted to get a nano for work but knowing the AC gets turned off on weekends lead me to believe it would be a pending smelly disaster and a waste of my time and $$$. I was away in the cool, coastal area of Mendocino over the past HOT! weekend. I put my AC down to 83 (normally set at 84/85) and put a controller on $7 walmart fan directed from the back of my canopy and over the top of the tank and my chiller never came on. Woo Hoo! I love evaporative cooling!!!!

Yup they're very cool devices but for the amount of Heat they pull they certainly pull some amps. Nonetheless a cool feature. By the way, the dorm fridge chiller had freezing problems too from the few feedback comments I'd heard from people who actually tried to build one or one with several iterations after learned lessons. With each lesson the system became more complicated and confusing to me. :shock:

The ice probe is cool. I wonder if I can make one. Do you think that a CPU heatsink and fan attachect to the 3/16 inch thick glass of the refugium would pull enough heat?

Ummm... No. The 3/16 glass (more of an insulator) would be a poor HT (heat xfr) medium. and you'd be sucking most of the heat coming into the tank i.e. on the outside of the glass back out and right to the air outside the aquarium again. In that case it might slightly slow the heat coming into the tank in that small area but do nothing for your tank. Generally, most SW HX (heat exchangers) use titanium to contact the water as this metal is resistant to SW corrosion while still allowing decent HT. That's what chillers use as their medium. Plus, they generally work best over a flowing water path. I'm interested to know what's inside the little cyclinder tip of the IceProbe. I imagine for liablility reasons it's just a solid piece of metal covered with a thin layer of poly plastic for corrosion protection. To do it yourself would be costly. By the time you buy your own thermal electric pad, power supply, built a corrosion resistant and condesation resistant enclosure you've more than bought an IceProbe. And that would even be for someone like me with a Heat/Mass Xfr background. Plus that doesn't include the $50 controller they provide which sounds to me like it's worth it. I'd be interested to put it to a Kill-A-Watt to see it's actual draw. If the TEC and fan are only pulling 50W max then it's a pretty small Peltier pad. Nonetheless, it's the best thing to cool a very small amount of water. I.E. I wouldn't put it on anything beyond 3 to 5 gallons. Again, if you want to go cheap, evaporative cooling is the best. YMMV :D

Here's one a guy in Sac has... it's the ice probe http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1399662