chiller alternative

I have a 75 gallon tank set up in a sun room for fragging. I am running 3 heaters in it during the winter to keep it warm but now that spring is here (was 82 yesterday) I need a way to cool the water. Tank got up to almost 90 degrees. I dont want to run a chiller if at all possible. So here is my thought:

Run a 1/4 inch tubing or even a 3/8 inch garden hose of about 50 feet under the sunroom floor. I think the temperature there is always relatively cool. With a thermostat from an old aquarium heater, a relay, and a small powerhead I should be able to pump water thru the hose and back into the tank at a lower temperature until I bring the temp within an acceptable range.

Any thoughts on this approach? I think this will be alot cheaper than running a chiller and a fan will only blow around warm air in the sunroom on a hot day.

 

I would stay away from garden hoses, the saltwater will most likely breakdown the material. If you want to do this, I would suggest only flexible PVC or vinyl tubing.
Now that being said, since your proposed method will not be controlled, you are playing with fire and possible disaster. Generally, the reluctance on adding a chiller is due to the costs of the chiller. When you add up the loss potential of losing all your coral, an $800 chiller doesn't look too bad. Thermostats in aquarium heaters are not very accurate and notoriously fail. Besides that, if you want to run your water the way you are, you will need a strong pump, a small powerhead will not work, since most have a max head of 12' at best, and that is pushing very low GPH.
As an old saying I have goes "save a few bucks now to shell out a boatload later to fix the mistakes made today. Or just buy what you need now and just cry once, then enjoy from that point on."

 

What is the temp in the room?

 

So this is more about being "green" than saving a couple bucks. We are experimenting with lowest possible power consumption in this tank. We are currently only containing a few frags and cleanup crew in it.

I agree, garden hose is probably not the right solution. However, a decent sized powerhead should be sufficient to push water thru the line. Only will have about 5-6 feet from top of the tank to the ground under the sun room.

The room is not air conditioned and will get 100+ degrees during the summer however it was only 84 degrees in there and the tank was a few degrees warmer.

 

Some additional information... When the tank was approaching 90 degrees, I had my kids impliment a short term solution similar to this (I was out of town at the time).
1. I had them take a 50 ft drain hose I use for water changes and stick a powerhead on one end.
2. Powerhead went in one end of the tank, other end went into the other end of the tank.
3. Middle of the hose was coiled up and droped into a 5 gallon bucket filled with ice.

There you have it, a crude, poor mans chiller. The only downside is that it was uncontrolled. They had to monitor the tank and turned off the powerhead when the temperature dropped back down within reason.

 

you can run a copper coil in a bucket of 50/50 water antifreeze and drill to holes through the side of the fridge its cheap to do if you have an old fridge

 

I actually have a fridge in the same room ( the soda fridge for the kids by the pool) which I planned as my backup plan I was going to just run some tubing thru there. but this defeats the purpose of a "green" tank.

 

If it's not about cash and about being green, why don't you buy a small solar panel setup to power only the chiller and buy a chiller as well. Then it's controlled, and green.

 

LOL that will definitely resolve both issues....

 

solar panel is planned for the sump pump once I determine if I can store enough electricity to cover night hours. Also lets be realistic, even if a chiller could be effectively run with solar panels, I am sure there is a better way to do this.