Heater/Fan Controller

Hey all,
Tomorrow I am receiving a shipment of seahorses (before anyone asks, they're from seahorsesource.com, so yes, captive bred), and I am trying to keep my tank temperature under control in a nice, hot Florida. My fan and heater are more than capable of doing this, but babysitting them to keep the temperature in the lower 70s isn't an option. We aren't in a financial situation to buy an apex or reefkeeper right now, so I need something to control both my fan and heater. Any ideas?

 

i guess a timmer set on the peak hours of heat during the day?

 

Maybe, but that takes a lot of planning and the temperature fluctuates a lot like today, it's cool outside, meaning upstairs, where our thermostat is, it's cool, making where the tank is downstairs warmer.

 

yeah its not going to be an exact science, try to get several temperature readings throughout the day and have the timer turn the heater off/fan on during the warmer times of the day. i dont see what else you could do aside having someone present to manually turn the equipment on and off....

 

i guess there would be no harm in running the fan constantly if things tend to get hot... so long as the heater does its job (if it needs to at all) we had a heat wave here in Switzerland and i literally unplugged my heater during the day... water stayed at a constant 27 °c...

 

Your heater should have a temp sensor in it already. I used my heater temp sensor for a while before I got my apex.

For the chiller, you could go with something like this.
http://www.amazon.com/RANCO-ETC-111..._4?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1438800203&sr=1-4

Cheaper than an apex for sure.

 

http://www.3reef.com/threads/my-new-ranco-a-controller-for-the-heaters.70811/

http://www.3reef.com/threads/stc1000-temperature-controller-build.113545/

You might give these a glance