copper piping?

My boyfriend has come up with an idea for a cooling system for my axolotl's tank. It would probably involve putting some copper piping in the water. Do any of the experts here know whether that could affect water quality?

New copper piping will definately leach copper into the water over time. There was an article published a while ago on the Reef board about this. I'll see if I can find it and provide a link. No promises though as it was a while ago and I am in the middle of starting a new business.

Copper is very much NOT recommended for amphibian enclosures. I can quote you some information from the Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry book, if you want to see a solid reference. My advice is don't do it.

But that leaves you with a problem: finding a material that is a good conductor of heat/cold AND is amphibian-safe. I've given this problem a lot of thought in the past, and unfortunately I didn't come up with any really good ideas. You can use plastic tubing for heat-exchange, but it's a pretty poor conductor of heat - you'd need a lot more coils of it. Stainless steel would work, but I don't know where you'd get stainless steel piping. Glass would work, but it's too fragile for this application.

Let us know what you come up with!

I experimented this summer with making a water cooler. I froze a bottle of water , then I coiled thin plastic piping around this, put it all in an insulated plastic picnic bag..i then surrounded all spaces with some gel ice packs ( these come delivered with my meat and tend to stay frozen/very cold for a good 24 hours), I then sealed it all leaving two ends of the piping out. One end i connected to a water filter and the other end I placed in the water. i.e the water was pumped through the ice and cooled. This worked quite well until the filter pump went on strike ( this was a tiny useless little thing )..I also realized it may work better if I had already cooled the water in the tank with bottles of iced waterfirst. It did drop the temp down approx 4 degrees. I am now looking at these small fridges with clear doors designed for putting beer in as it might just be easier to use this instead..especially as mother in law has one tucked away....