Peltier cooler
 

Unknown to the UK we are currently having a small heatwave going over 90f, I like to keep my tank 78 - 79 recently going up to 82, have just built a Peltier chip cooler on a computer heatsink with a cooling block, I am able to cool the hot side either blowing in or out but I am still getting heat transferance between the hot and cold side meaning the cold side gets cool but not cold enough to make much of a difference. Have any of you guys had any success with one of these.

Don't waste your time IMO.. 82 is just fine...
And Peltiers aren't that great.. very inefficient..

I let my tank hit 82°F daily. If you do want it cooler, have you tried putting on a fan?

Are you using the radiator type or water cooling block for the heat exchanger on the hot side? The cooling efficiency of the Peltier really rely greatly on the ambient temperature. Assuming your room temperature is high as well, you might have to run water cooling with the cooling water tank far away from your fish tank

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I was worried about the aluminum from the transfer block, and still didn't sound reassuring to buy all the parts and no telling if would cool tank enough!

Almost like the feeling of buying a Chinese brand chiller for less than 120.

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The hot side has a CPU heatink with a fan which is not hot when held and a water cooling block on the cold side, from reading all the blogs the cooler the hot side means the cold side gets colder but seems the heat is leaching from the hot to cold side preventing it from freezing

You could use this:

https://s1.postimg.org/eb9g4r9ov/s-l1000.jpg

However, this is designed for rather small tanks, <= 40 gallons (151 liters). At 40 gallons, you would only be looking at a maximum of a 2°F temperature drop. Above that and you would only be wasting electricity.

I had to rebuild a small peltier based wine fridge. They used a rather thick wall filled with insulation between the hot and cold side of the peltier plate.

They then also used a thick rubber gasket to seal fill the air gap between the two heat blocks around the peltier itself.

It's a lot of work for very little gain. You'd be better off getting a desk fan and pointing it at the top of your sump with the doors open. Have a lot of top-off water ready. Adding two 120v AC fans above my tank almost doubled my evap rate.

I used to use peltiers for my water cooled PC back in the day. Its a pain in the butt. Very doable, but a pain in the but. Very inefficient as well.

I actually bought a small jbj nano (?) after all that and piped it in line instead of the peltier for a good while and the electricity usage was actually lower. Now mind you this is before water cooling was really a thing and there really wasn't a good way to do it yet.

Basically you need to cool your hot side better. If you water cool the hot side your cold side will get cold enough to make ice no problem. Or you could get a really big heatsink for it.

If I were to give my best advice.... a cheap Chinese chiller would be better than trying to mess with all the peltier stuff.

Unless your tank is under 5 gallons a peltier based chiller(including the ice probe) will do about nothing.

If you want one with enough power to be useful you will have to make it and you will end up spending more than a used chiller, and using WAY more power to drive it.

Get a fan and an auto top off and then see if you need further cooling. If so get a chiller.

Just curious if anyone know if that probe is just a rod heatsink encase with some kind of plastic?

I run 83-84F. Higher temps accelerate growth.