Which chiller brand?

[JReefaddict]

I'm looking at buying two chillers for hurricane season prep down here and I was told JBJ made good chillers but after reading that their customer service and products are not the best I'm apprehensive buying two of theirs. The tanks in question are my 180 and 57 gallon reef tanks. I am looking at a 1/10 for the small tank and a 1/5 for the large tank. I want to go larger than needed with the chillers because it gets warm down here in fl with no ac in August.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I've had a couple of the smaller JBJ Arctica chillers and they were great. Super quiet and never gave me any problems. You'd be fine with the 1/10th hp on our 57g tank. I now have a 180 and I used to have 1050 watts on MH over the tank. JBJ didn't have anything as big as I wanted. I ended up with a 1 hp Aqua Euro and put it out behind the house. It did the job well for 3 years of MH use. But a year ago I switched to leds and now it runs about 2 minutes every hour during the daytime! If you are going to have MH lighting I'd recommend you go bigger than 1/5th hp for the 180g. If you are using t5 or leds you would probably be OK... I might go 1/4 or 1/2 hp just to be sure.

 

[JReefaddict]

I'm running t5s over both tanks. There probably isn't much price difference between a 1/5 and 1/4hp anyway