My Temporary Home-Made Chiller

[NightWolf]

Recently, due to the summer months, the temperature in my aquariums has been steadily rising to an uncomfortable degree for my Chinese Fire Bellied Newts. So, to combat the heat I drove over to my storage, sorted through our stuff, and came back home with a couple of fans. I will provide the link to my temporary "Chiller" setup:

http://www.caudata.org/forum/members/nightwolf-albums-my-temporary-home-made-chiller.html

As you can see in the photos, I took the head of the fan off of the base and secured it on a pole with some cheap wire that I purchased from Michaels Craft store for around 4 dollars. Once secured, I lifted the lid off of the enclosure, placed a spare canvas on the opposite end from the fan to allow any stray air current to be directed back at the water. It took a total of 10 minutes, but in that same period of time it lowered the temperature in the tank by 7 degrees, (it should lower the temperature even more if given some time). The total cost of this was zero dollars, as I already had wire, a fan, and a spare canvas laying around.

Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone who maybe is short of cash, as chances are you have these materials somewhere in your household. You could even use duct tape instead of wire.

If anyone has any "Chiller" ideas, or ways to improve my current temporary setup, please comment!

(Don't worry, I am always in the room when my newt's lid is off their tank, and I will be purchasing a mesh top to simplify things.)

 

[NewtZoo]

Fallowing in my fathers footsteps, Im a huge fan of cheap fixes! Im glad it has had such a big reduction in temp., How is the evaporation rate?

 

[TheDoyel]

Pretty brilliant. I had to do the same sort of thing when we lost power for my axolotl tank. Have you also thought about getting a cooler, floating some half filled-frozen water bottles in it (or just ice water) and blowing the fan across that before the air hits the tank? That should help drop it another 10 or so degrees. Just be sure to switch bottles out or add more ice every few hours. That might be a bit extreme for your newts, but I don't know how hot it get's where you are from.

 

[NightWolf]

NewtZoo: Cheap fixes are truly the best! Especially when my other option was to buy a special fan off of ebay that might not even work, and it's shipping cost was the same as the item As for the evaporation rate, it seems to be minimal, and I am just happy this idea worked. How would you accuratly measure the evaporation rate?

TheDoyel: That sounds like a brilliant idea, and I will definatly keep that in mind if the temperature and humidity in my house fluctuate again, (and I am sure it will considering it is only the beginning of summer!). The temperature rose to a stifling 80 degrees F! And, it was continueing to steadily increase, so, long story short, once I had setup the fan so that it would blow across the surface, it brought my newt's tank back down to a comfortable 64 degrees F over the course of a few hours.

 

[NewtZoo]

Hey Nightwolf,
Evaporation rate=volume water evaperated over time.
So measure the water level when its full, then measure how much you lose over some period of time, that is your evaporation rate...but I was not asking specifically, just curious because I live in Phoenix, AZ (112F, 44.4C today) and Im always looking for ways to cool down my Cynops.