Aquarium Chiller vs Window Unit

[divetoday]

okay! I finally put down the change on Black Friday to upgrade my lighting from just LED to LED/T5 hybrid only to watch the temperatures in my tank soar by 2 degrees to 82.5 F when the lights are all on.

The room where my tank lives is always a few degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and the tank has always run at about 80 F except on the coldest nights. (We live in Fort Lauderdale, so there aren’t many of those. ).

My question is should I add a window AC unit or an Aquarium Chiller? What do you think Reef2Reef?

 

[CC13]

okay! I finally put down the change on Black Friday to upgrade my lighting from just LED to LED/T5 hybrid only to watch the temperatures in my tank soar by 2 degrees to 82.5 F when the lights are all on.

The room where my tank lives is always a few degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and the tank has always run at about 80 F except on the coldest nights. (We live in Fort Lauderdale, so there aren’t many of those. ).

My question is should I add a window AC unit or an Aquarium Chiller? What do you think Reef2Reef?

Lol if your room temperature is that warm without a chiller, adding one will almost certainly result in the room temperature running far hotter.

I would use AC unit.

 

[Smo]

And add a fan over the tank that comes on when the tank temp creeps up. A lot of energy can be removed thru latent heat of evaporation.

 

[theMeat]

Agreed
A chiller is noisy, makes a ton of heat in the room, is expensive, needs maintenance, and won’t last all that long. As a last option.

A little ventilation can go a long way. In canopy, and stand. A fan to boost that ventilation, even more so

Running cheap or power hungry pumps can make a huge difference too. Changing from let’s say a mag drive to an Eheim hobby pump, with comparable gph, can save you upwards of a couple of degrees. Would be surprised if it didn’t save you at least two