My 15 year old decided to finally make a commitment to a pet, and to my surprise chose an Axolotl. I've never heard of them before, and I can understand her interest (regeneration? Neat!). Although she convinced us she had everything figured out before getting one, I've done some side research myself and found although she's done really well planning and preparing her small tank (a 10g for now, she said she'll want to increase to 20/30g later) she's missed the boat so to speak for temperature checks.
We've had a week or two of abnormally hot weather, and her tank temp is reaching 72-74F; As we don't have A/C in the house, I'm left with finding her a cooling solution and quickly as I don't want her Axolotl to suffer.
I have two choices - a water chiller or evaporative cooling; I would have gone the evaporative cooling route to see if it was sufficient, but we were able to get a Coralife 1/4 hp Aqua Chiller (used) for $50, and it's cycling right now in my garage for 24h to verify it works okay (so far it's done it's job using a 10g bucket of water pretty well), but the pump we received puts out far too much volume for her small tank (it would probably cause a water tornado if I used it). As well, from what I understand the correct method of connection would be from tank thru pump to filter, then on to the chiller and back to the tank. As she has a Topfin Silentstream 10, there's no connectors for the chiller (and I don't know of it would have enough power to force the water through the chiller and back up to the tank).
I was considering a submersible pump, connecting it's output to a water line and adapter to the chiller ( I think they're 3/4", but I'm not sure) and then running the chilled water to the opposite side of the tank (since a submersible pump would increase the temperature of the tank a little), or placing a flat device suspended above the water so the outflow hits it and splits it up, causing a raindroplike waterfall and dissipating it's force).
This is really only for summer - for Fall it doesn't get that hot, and winter we keep the indoor temperature in the 65-69F range anyways, so we likely won't need a chiller then.
Anyone have any ideas/suggestions for me? I'll paste this to another section of the site for input too, as I dont know how many people will read the welcome section.
Thank you!
We've had a week or two of abnormally hot weather, and her tank temp is reaching 72-74F; As we don't have A/C in the house, I'm left with finding her a cooling solution and quickly as I don't want her Axolotl to suffer.
I have two choices - a water chiller or evaporative cooling; I would have gone the evaporative cooling route to see if it was sufficient, but we were able to get a Coralife 1/4 hp Aqua Chiller (used) for $50, and it's cycling right now in my garage for 24h to verify it works okay (so far it's done it's job using a 10g bucket of water pretty well), but the pump we received puts out far too much volume for her small tank (it would probably cause a water tornado if I used it). As well, from what I understand the correct method of connection would be from tank thru pump to filter, then on to the chiller and back to the tank. As she has a Topfin Silentstream 10, there's no connectors for the chiller (and I don't know of it would have enough power to force the water through the chiller and back up to the tank).
I was considering a submersible pump, connecting it's output to a water line and adapter to the chiller ( I think they're 3/4", but I'm not sure) and then running the chilled water to the opposite side of the tank (since a submersible pump would increase the temperature of the tank a little), or placing a flat device suspended above the water so the outflow hits it and splits it up, causing a raindroplike waterfall and dissipating it's force).
This is really only for summer - for Fall it doesn't get that hot, and winter we keep the indoor temperature in the 65-69F range anyways, so we likely won't need a chiller then.
Anyone have any ideas/suggestions for me? I'll paste this to another section of the site for input too, as I dont know how many people will read the welcome section.
Thank you!