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Chillers and Fans

538 views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  talontsiawd 
#1 ·
I'm building a 40 breeder setup for RCS currently. I will be doing only RCS and low light plants. I have never cooled my tanks before, I always just cranked the a/c. I live in Arizona where I at times let our house get up to 90 degrees when we go out of town or leave the house for the day.

What I want to set up is an automated system that keeps my temperature in check. I've been looking at running a Reefkeeper with a heater, Eheim skimmer, lights and a fan or chiller. Should I put the money into the Reefkeeper and fan or go with a JBJ Arctica Chiller? I like the controller turning off the heater in case of heater failure, but i'm concerned with evaporation. How much water would likely evaporate in a day if the fan ran all day?
I want to automate my temperature control, but if the evaporation is going to be too much then I may just do the chiller. I could keep the price down with the crontroller(130) and fan(5).
 
#2 ·
I would look at a much cheaper controller that seems to work well for me. Auction site and careful shopping can get this controller for about $15 to control both heat and cool.
I would caution that you need to do a DIY water proofing to keep the probe dry. They seem to be water resistant, not water proof.

They seem to work for me on both preventing heater runaways as well as heating and cooling for a greenhouse. Limited to 10 amp draw but that runs a space heater on the low setting.
 
#3 ·
Now that I have mine dialed in I'm really liking my reefkeeper lite. That said, I'm also using mine to control an ATO and my CO2 via pH monitoring in addition to my lights and a heater. It's a bit expensive but a pretty neat system, it is nice to have it all interfaced in one place.
 
#4 ·
I have done the math and it's actually cheaper for me to just run the AC. Even with a fairly inefficient house, in the very high 90's, low 100's, it's about $10/day to run the AC when I am out of town. That obviously can add up quickly if you are out of town a lot but if I had new windows, better insulation and a drop ceiling and/or insulated topper on my exposed rafter home, I feel the price may be 1/2, even less than that.

I would seriously consider what it really costs you, obviously the size of your home, the efficiency of your home, how much you are out of town, etc, really cost you. For me, it's something that could pay off over time but it has not yet, plus I have 3 aquariums on top of that. I also don't know how reliable chillers are either, but I know my AC is very reliable in comparison to most aquarium related things.

Not to discourage the idea, I would just do the math. Take a bill in the spring or fall where you don't use much heat/air and compare that to your worst month, subtract the high bill from the low and you can pretty reasonably ball park what a month of AC costs you in the hot months, then divide that down to days, how many days are you out of town. We run the AC almost 24/7 in the day though, a bit easier to estimate because since we have lived here, either my wife, or I have worked at home, sometimes both so we know what 24/7 AC costs us.
 
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