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I've googled chiller posts for about an hour, but can't find anything
specifically on this topic, mostly because I'm not vainly trying to use a dorm fridge. :-) If I've missed something, I apologize. Basivally, I'm trying to use one chiller to cool two tank, temporarily. I have a large (~280 gallon) freshwater system for keeping native fish, with a drop-in chiller set to 15.5 C. There are other tanks in the room that are passively cooled by the ambient air (about 18 C), but this system has a couple of circulation pumps that give off enough heat to need additional cooling. I've set up a temporary holding tank of about 130 gallons next to the chilled tank, run by a good-sized Iwaki, which is heating the water up to about 20.5 C. I've tried running the return from this pump through 12 feet of 3/4" ID clear flexible tubing (Vinyl? it's whatever they had at Home Depot.) that's coiled in the sump of the chilled system, but this hasn't helped, much. I'm wondering what I can do to increase the efiiciency of heat-transfer here. I'm guessing I'd need to add a lot more of the 3/4" tube to get much improvement, as it's fairly think-walled. I have a spare powerhead (AQ Systems 600) which I could hook up to .5" ID tubing that might work better in a dedicated cooling circuit. The smaller tubing's cheaper, anyway, so I could buy more of it- remember, this is a temporary (6 week) installation. I'm wondering the following: Could I put a copper coil in this circuit? Will copper corrode or be otherwise "bad" in a soft-water system at pH 7.2? Should the powerhead be in the cool tank and drive water through a coil in the warm tank, or vice-versa? I'm thinking immersing the powerhead in the cool tank will put the waste heat there, where the real chiller can pump it off. The only benefit to putting it in the warm tank might be that I could return it above the water line and get some additional aeration (it's holding trout, who seem to be real oxygen hogs) and perhaps a touch of evaporative cooling. Any thoughts on these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, -Duncan |
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