How to Buy the Right Aquarium Chiller

Whether you have a warm water reef setup, or you specialize in cold water marine species, an aquarium chiller is a great investment. The chiller allows you to raise a cold loving variety of marine species that require cooler temperature than you are willing to maintain in your home or office. For marine aquarium owners, an increase in water temperature can be a real problem, because the warmer saltwater holds less oxygen than cooler one. If water warms up too much due to sunlight or heat production caused by other equipment, the marine organisms can suffer due to a lack of oxygen. There are many stores online that sell saltwater aquarium supplies and other accessories. Various types of aquarium protein skimmers such as traditional, hang on back, recirculating and sump saver are available in the stores. Choose the one that suits your needs.

What is an Aquarium Chiller?

It is a piece of equipment that helps you maintain a constant marine temperature. Other equipments such as lighting and water pumps, actually release heat into the water. So the more equipment you have running, the greater is the requirement of a chiller.

Types of Aquarium Chillers

When purchasing a chiller, you have a choice between an in-line water type, a thermoelectric one, and a drop-in water variant.

The in-line chiller is meant to fit onto a larger setup, and is usually used for saltwater aquariums. This variant requires plumbing to make it fit into an in-line filtration system, which means that you should try to add it at the blueprint stage, before any part of your system is actually built.

The drop-in chiller is the simplest to install, because it consists of a coil which is placed in the sump in the wet/dry filter. This coil is connected to the unit’s compressor by a thermostat. Because no plumbing is involved, the drop-in variant works very well for systems that don’t have lots of room for accessories.

Thermoelectric chillers use the idea that a current sent through two different conducting materials will heat up on one side, while the other side rejects heat. This variant has the hot side insulated from the cool side, and the cool side is pointed towards the aquarium, which in turn cools the water.

What to Look for in a Good Chiller?

Before choosing the correct chiller for your setup, you need to consider a number of items. First, do your homework and discover the temperature comfort zones for your livestock. Some creatures and plants tolerate heat better than others. You also need to figure out the size of your total marine system, including the sump area, since a large system is going to need a bigger chiller. Also factor in the amount of equipment you use that gives off heat into the water. When deciding on the correct sized device, remember to invest in a chiller that is slightly larger than you require, because a larger variant is going to do the job more efficiently.

The best place to buy good quality chiller is online stores. They give all the details of the product along with image. You can read product description mentioning the horsepower, inlet and outlet size and other important details. These stores also provide with other accessories such as aquarium refractometer to check the salinity of water. In order to add additives such as calcium, alkalinity and magnesium, a Kamoer dosing pump can be of great use. Maintenance of aquarium has become very easy with such equipments easily available online.

richard gilliland is the author of this article on ecotech marine mp40.