Mixing Station Chiller?

[TeeSquared1214]

So currently I have my mixing station in my garage in central Texas where temps outside easily get to 95F+ degrees outside and sometimes even 100+. Luckily my garage has been relatively cool but my RODI/Saltwater Mixing station has been around the low to mid 80s. It’s a 20g brute trash can that has a float valve for RODI which can be gravity fed via a garden hose valve and tubing to a 40g brute trash can where the salt is added and mixed. Is this worth a chiller? I have a 100g display about 125-150 total volume reef tank and the temp swings are causing visible stress on the corals (mushrooms and zoas shriveling temporarily) maybe it’s due to new water or the temp or both.. I have a busy schedule so putting the saltwater into 5 gallon jugs and moving them inside to cool isn’t very feasible, that and I’ve got a good system going for water changes using the mixing pump and a python hose. Any ideas or thoughts are appreciated!

 

[UncommonSense]

So currently I have my mixing station in my garage in central Texas where temps outside easily get to 95F+ degrees outside and sometimes even 100+. Luckily my garage has been relatively cool but my RODI/Saltwater Mixing station has been around the low to mid 80s. It’s a 20g brute trash can that has a float valve for RODI which can be gravity fed via a garden hose valve and tubing to a 40g brute trash can where the salt is added and mixed. Is this worth a chiller? I have a 100g display about 125-150 total volume reef tank and the temp swings are causing visible stress on the corals (mushrooms and zoas shriveling temporarily) maybe it’s due to new water or the temp or both.. I have a busy schedule so putting the saltwater into 5 gallon jugs and moving them inside to cool isn’t very feasible, that and I’ve got a good system going for water changes using the mixing pump and a python hose. Any ideas or thoughts are appreciated!

You definitely want to try to match temperature as closely as possible when doing a water change, so anything to move further in that direction is improvement!

Chillers don’t remove heat from the room itself; they just extract it from the water, and move it into the surrounding air (unless remotely mounted)…

Try blowing across the surface of the mixed water with a larger fan to take advantage of evaporative cooling!

Floating several larger frozen bottles/jugs of tap water may offer several degrees of water cooling as well!

Using a water pump to circulate the mixing container/agitate the surface further will help hot/cold water blend, and further assist in evaporative cooling! (Though in some cases, pump heat can offset cooling benefit; propeller pumps are the best bet here!)

— See if you can get your mixing container down to a reasonable temperature using these simple methods before you start getting into a heat exchanger system plumbed/mounted remotely; a far more complex and costly affair!

 

[KrisReef]

I have a chiller for my garage tank and the stability is worth the electricity, imo.