Pretty smart system, if potable water is no issue. Like someone else said, we are blessed with cheap and plentiful water and power in BC.

And speaking of plentiful cheap power, I use a fan for cooling. Both my DT and refugium are open top, so a properly aimed fan hooked up to my Reefkeeper will turn on when the water temperature calls for it. It works like a charm!

All bring up very good points.
As for power needed to run tap water, its already there , we use it anyways to wash dishes and take a shower. Few drops per second more to the drain when our reservoirs are overflowing... is it that bad?

If so then why don't we go after chemical industry companies and metallurgy to make them stop wasting river water and to make them stop polluting and killing fish by the trillions?

I am taking clean water out of environment, and then after i cool down my tank i put it back to the environment still clean, non toxic and unpolluted with industrial waste.

Naturally people will choose electricity in places where there is no or little water and Hydro is cheaper then water, i, most likely would do the same.


The big question is ; why we talk, talk, talk about saving a planet and being environment friendly if all this comes down to money anyway?

fan doesn't work when outside temperature is like 30+ C. I used frozen coke bottle for emergency but i think I will try your heat exchanger method. Last summer I lost bunch of frags due to the heat. This time I won't repeat the same mistake again.

The fan works for me. Even when it's 30, it brings the tank temp down a couple of degrees. Remember, it's the evaporation that cools the tank, not the temperature of the air. And speaking of evaporation, you gotta make sure you replenish your top off water often when using a fan.

+1

my tanks are in the basement and during summer hours they are kept cool and I ran only leds

interesting topic, what is the highest temperature you get during a very hot summer day?

I use a fan directed right at my water surface when the temps get really high, but then my evaporation goes way up and I end up using a whole lot more ro/di for topoff. So I guess my way also wastes a lot of water. Probably on par with the OP's method.

I guess the whole point of this, and I refrained from saying it in my original post, as it has been said numerous times over the years.

we all know when it gets hot we can have problems, and we all know that the areas we live in get hot, some more than others, but we end up complaining about tank times every year, and a lot complain about die offs. so what do we do, we come up with some 2 buck inefficient way to cool our tanks. yes in a emergency in a power outage, you have a heck of a good way to bring your tank temp down.

but here is my question to you, and any others looking at this.

we spend thousands of bucks on our corals and fish, but yet we balk at spending 2 to 400 bucks on a chiller that will do a much more efficient job and will come on and turn off automatically with out you having to be home.

does this make sense to you?

Steve

The fan also turns on and off automatically, if it's on the controller, switched on by the temp. input.