DIY chiller questions..

[misfit]

Well Heres an idea not to sure if you can do it but ill throw it out there. Call you inclose your sump area? If so, isulate the walls good and use a window a/c unit to keep the room colder which should lower the temp of your tank. sound good or no.

 

[scsinet]

That's probably a better idea than a lot of the other ideas out there. Most people with heats problems DO have air conditioned houses, and running the room cooler will have a big effect. I seriously doubt that simply cooling the air around the sump will have a dramatic effect because the surface area of the water is where the exchange will take place in this case and the surface area isn't that great.
What would work in this case would be to use a wet/dry filter (with or without bio-media). These things are designed to increase the surface area for aerobic bacteria action, so if you modified one to pipe cold air from an air conditoner through the media chamber, this would likely have a very dramatic impact on water temperature... I mean REALLY dramatic. Of course, evaporation would be very problematic, especially since air from an AC unit is very dry due to the dehumidifiing action of them, but that would only help chill even more... hmmm.. food for thought... :thinking: