DA’s Quick Tip (03/16/11)

March 16, 2011,  Daily's Quick Tips  No comments

Today’s Quick Tip (This one’s a little bit long),

When was the last time you checked/cleaned your aquarium chiller? Yes, it has been unusually cold this winter (Well, not here in Southern California) but, springtime is just around the corner. Unfortunately, for us hobbyists we know what comes after spring. It’s that dreaded summer with excessively high temperatures and that daily thought of our corals and livestock melting!

Well one way to avoid that is to spend sometime this weekend checking out our chillers. The best way to clean a chiller, aside from wiping down the outside with cleaning wipes, is to do the following:

1. Get out the vacuum cleaner and remove the dust building up on the grille. This is the quickest way to improve performance because dust builds up, obstructing airflow and affecting performance.
2. Remove the chiller from your plumbing setup and grab a bucket, small pump/powerhead and some vinegar.
3. Mix the vinegar and water into the bucket and run the solution through the chiller, now do this backward because calcium buildup and other hard deposits will form on the inside and the reverse flow will flush it out.
4. Do this overnight and the next day remove the vinegar solution and run freshwater for about 10 minutes, this will flush out any leftover vinegar in the chiller system
5. Plug the unit back in and manually turn in on for a few minutes just to make sure the chiller is back online.

Now is the best time to perform this maintenance because it’s not 100 degrees outside once summer hits you want to make sure that little slice of the ocean is in top shape!

The next posting needs pictures, we will have to work on that.