Okay.. So... I am purchasing one for my tank. The portable unit I have in the room for some reason starts to blow hot air after a while of being on. I have noticed this about three times now I have I have a feeling it doesnt like being vented as far as I have it run. On that note.. the A/C vent from the house keeps the room at or around 80 80-82.. It will not pull it down further with the lamps in the room lit. It cools it down to about 77-78 during the night though. I have still noticed that the tank temp will not settle. I been keeping an eye on it and it wants to run up to about 83 pushing 84 before the lights go off... I purchased a 1/2 horse chiller and was wanting some thought on them... I was hoping not to have to go this route but I feel its a safer move than to keep trying to cool the room rather than just going ahead and cooling the water. This way it can be 102 outside and 85 in the room and I can know that my water is still sitting at 80 degrees solid... SO.. What are your thoughts on Chillers? Do you have one? Ever owned one? Easy? Hard? Works? Dont work? Let me know how you feel about their use.
Have you tried a boxfan blowing across the surface of the water? Evaporative cooling works great on our tank.
Yup, Tried that. Have three. Its just the static temperature of the room. It just gets too hot with the big lights running. It heats up more than I can cool. Thus causing the tank to stay higher than I would like.
I think he has two box fans hanging in there and blowing over the surface, if I'm not mistaken. They are not doing the job unfortunately... not enough, at least. Ching. Ching. Blah.
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I put a JBJ Arctica Titanium on mine and absolutely love it. I test my salinity once a week and now because I'm chilling rather than evap cooling, I haven't needed to top off with RO in almost a month. My hood is sealed so my condensation just drips back into the tank.  I wont go back to evap cooling. The chiller is just too brainless. I love it. Easy set up, virtually no maintenance, and cuts out extra top offs. My fish and coral love it too. They enjoy the consistancy of the temp and salinity.  The pros far outweigh the cons for me. Actually, the only con which I havent experienced yet would be chiller failure and tank overheat, but we all have gone through that and its generally not too big of a deal to recover from. The only other thing that is only a slight con is the fact that it sits next to my tank and couldn't be concealed in my tank stand. Not that big of deal though, I think it looks kinda cool and high tech. Â
Thanks for the feed back... Its should be in next week but until then I have cut back on lighting and have the ol frozen coke bottles to keep it in check.... I have heard nothing but good things so I am excited to put it on.
You could also get one and consider taking it to an AC repair shop for a cooling fluid charge test and cleaning every other year. I sell preventative maintenance for a living and am a firm believer that its far cheaper to maintain something rather than fix it after it breaks.  They can test the charge, clean the coils, check your cooling fan motor, and you're good for another two years.  Cheap insurance for a critical tank component.  I'd go for it, you will love it. Evap cooling is a pain compared to chilling.....in my opinion of course.
Luke you can always buy another controller and hook your lights up to it. If your chiller fails and the tank temp rises the controller will shut down the lights. You could even get a dual controller (Ranco has them) that can turn fans on when the lights go out.
I am getting a reef keeper lite to control the chiller, heaters and lites. By the time you purchased all the controlers seperate you might as well get one.. LOL
