Yes, I had to bite the bullet. My apartment has western exposure, and the wall where my aquarium is located, between two windows, radiates heat 24/7 all summer long, from the end of May until well into September. Last year, it drove me nuts, for I was concerned all the time that I would end up with an unplanned fish soup. By the end of May the temperature was stuck in the mid-eighties again, and by now (July 4th) it would have been high eighties or low nineties. Amazingly, last year I did not see any direct losses from the heat, but I no longer wanted to agonize over this issue. I already have a radiant barrier behind the aquarium, but it is clearly not enough.
I got myself this JBJ Arctica(R) 1/15 HP Chiller, which is working like a charm. It runs about 10 times a day, lowering the temperature from almost 80F down to 78F, so that in practice it maintains an average of 79F So far I have used a small
Hydor Circulation Pump to pump the water through, which works fine, except that the intake screen is not really fine enough, and some Malaysian Trumpet Snails are being pulled in, and in one case blocked the impeller. That incident could have caused the chiller to burn out... not a good thought. So, next, I will rig up a
ATI sponge pre-filter, as it provides maximum protection against such incidents, and will also make the water safe for inverts and babies, so they cannot get sucked into the chiller.
In practice, since the chiller requires service every six months, I will simply service it at the end of the season. When I do so, I will install some
Eheim Quick Release Double Taps on both sides, which will make it easy to disconnect the chiller from the aquarium, and also to simply reverse the flow by hooking up the pump to the outflow hose for a while, and blowing out the chiller (not into the aquarium of course). As an alternative to the pricey Eheim double taps, you can also do a
DIY quick connect shutoff. One way or another the quick connect solution is what will make servicing this unit painless, just as they would for a canister filter. That is all I should have to do for service.
This chiller claims to be very energy efficient, and it certainly seems so to me. In terms of electrical consumption, it evidently uses some power, running about 10 times per day, but it does not seem to be excessive. For my first month, I barely saw an increase in my kWh consumption compared to the prior year, and it will be running only 4-5 months out of the year. Not bad for a lot of peace of mind.
