Fishtank + Water loop - Possible?

jongeeone

jongeeone

jongeeone

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Right, in my garden i have a pond - a big pond, its like 3500odd gallons and it had 2 lil baby koi in it :rolleyes:, so because they were small i decided to put them in a fish tank over the winter, this fish tank is in my shed so the water is still pretty chilled.

I was wondering if, for a fun project if i could use the tank as a resivoir for a water cooling loop, would it be possible? any harm to the fish - obviously i cant use chemicals found in normal loops.

Ideas?
 
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Gonna clog up your blocks with all sorts of crap in the long run I would have thought unless you put a filter in.

Jokester
 
Are you mad ?

You could run your loop through your fish tank, but you would end up with either fish crap in your blocks or fish in your blocks and very little water movement as you are going to need one hell of a pump to move water round a tank and through a water loop.

Mad i say.
 
Rather than use the water from the tank, why not build a res outside the case and have that next to the fish tank? (as I assume the ambient temp by the tank is pretty cold). It would have the same sorta effect.
 
nothing to stop you immersing a rad in the tank as part of a closed loop so the 2 lots of water don't mix, only issues would be if the fish don't like warm water and if thats not enough to run it passive because obviously you couldn't have fans.
 
I think the fish get grumpy at being boiled - there is, however, a mod somewhere on the internet with this being done. I'm just too tired to hunt for it :)
 
Have you considered trying it with Sea Monkeys instead. I have it on good authority that Sea Monkeys don't mind being pumped round a loop at high speed as this actually mimmicks their natural habitat in Sea Monkey Land. Being salt water based however you will probably have to keep an eye out for corrosion.
 
can't u just cool the PC with a closed loop to the fish tank, then cool the fish tank with a closed loop to the outside pond !?!?!

Hmmmmmm.............
 
100W or so from the CPU would be too much for tropical fish, let alone Koi, depending on the size of the tank and the temperature in your shed. It won't be cosistantly cold in there...

Bring the tank inside for the winter as the water could get colder than the deepest parts of the pond due to lack of mass in the tank, even with 100W from the CPU going in.

I'm assuming there would be a length of pipework from the house to the shed, this alone might lose all the heat. I'd put the rad from the cooling loop in the pond and use it all year round like that.

Just one final problem, the outside pipes freezing when the CPU isn't working hard.... a reasonable flow rate should stop that, but if you turn it off overnight you'll be outside with a kettle in the morning!
Antifreeze should help and a radiator that isn't going to rust/leak.
You could use a coil of hose as a heat exchanger instead and weigh it down to the bottom of the pond to keep it out of sight, will give the Koi another place to hide too.
 
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