Water temp control (too hot during the summer)

[BigBoris]

Hello, I have a 55G/110G tank and both are temporarily in my garage because my office is being built. My garage gets upwards to 95 on a day where it's only 80 outside. So I purchased some large industrial fans to keep the air moving and cooling. But we are expecting 110 degrees over the weekend so I'm looking for some cooling solutions to keep the water temps down. Earlier in the year I was taking water out of the tank and freezing it into large blocks and adding that to the tank to regulate the temp but I need something different as I won't be home on Monday and the temps expected to still be in the high end.

In was thinking of running a submersible water pump in a large 55g trash can filled with ice water and having copper tubes running through my tank to remover heat but I don't know how my Chiclids would react to the copper in the water. Or how that would impact my water conditions. I could use plastic tubing but I'm mot sure how well that will transfer heat.

Any ideas would be great.

Thanks!

 

[Fresh2o]

I was was wondering how effective the heat transfer would be with plastic as well.
Regarding copper, my gut instinct would say no, however, most residential plumbing contains copper piping at some point. The only concern I read about is the pH. Kept above 7.0 reduces the chances of copper leaching from the piping.

 

[V227]

Flint, Michigan's drinking water problems arose from acidic water flowing through ancient lead pipes. Water with a neutral PH to the mid 8's shouldn't cause much copper to leach from copper tubing.
Copper is a micro nutrient anyway, so a tiny amount probably wouldn't hurt. It might even kill off any budding Ick or Oodinium colonies in the tank.

 

[54seaweed]

have you maybe considered tank fans they help me drop about 10*


than there's the other route chillers

 

[BigBoris]

I have a new 45 Gallon trash can that I'm thinking of running garden hose through and filling it with ice and pumping the tank water through to cool it. The tank water would never come into contact with anything other than the pump and the inside of the garden hose. I guess if the hose is submerged long enough it will transfer the heat from the water... (I hope.)

 

[Autumnsky]

Window AC unit. A larger one.

 

[Autumnsky]

Maybe plastic tent off the a smaller area with the tanks in it to keep the cool in a smaller area. There are also the in house with vent outside units. Sounds like a very hard thing

Frozen gallon water jugs similar to what you were doing, and pay a friend or an insured pet sitter /someone to add them in on Monday for you..

 

[King Fisher]

Window AC unit. A larger one.

I'm with you. Add even a small electric AC unit near the tank.

 

[BigBoris]

So I came up with a rig that seems to be working. I got a bunch of 1/2 inch T fittings and a couple 90s with about 20 feet of copper pipes. Connected them all together in a spare tank. I have a 770GPH pump passing the tank water through the spare tank with ice water chilled to 60 degrees. I was able to get the water to maintain 80 in the main tank. I could have added more ice to the water to lower the temp even more but I didn't want to fluctuate too much. I usually have the water heater set to 77 however right now I set it to 76 to prevent the water from getting too cold in the tank and since the tanks in my garage it usually hits 80 to 81.5 on normal days. Then cools to about 78 without any efforts. I'll post a few photos.

 

[King Fisher]

What happens when you have to leave for say a week?

 

[BigBoris]

Here are some photos of what I rigged up. This is temporary seeing as I'll have my office with A.C. completed soon.

To answer your question about leaving for a week. I'll still need to have someone feed my fish and my dogs while I'm out of town.

 

[BigBoris]

One improvement I would add to this is a power head to keep the cool water flowing over the pipes to be more efficient. But it's worki g for now.