# Vivarium Cooling Idea



## Brooks_91 (Jan 14, 2015)

Okay, so here is North Carolina it gets mildly hot and the house stays around 80, but I've noticed that my darts have done the best this winter when they were kept in the high 60's low 70's ( common knowledge anyway).....I have a very open house so it is hard to cool just the area with the frogs, and the basement gets far to cold to heat effectively. 

That being said I started looking for a way to cool everybody down that didn't cost me my right kidney, to no avail really. I am the kind of person that will find a way...maybe not the easiest way, but I will. So, here is my idea.

In the process of building my new rack setup I am building my own enclosures and I thought about computer fans on top. This lead to drilling a hole in the top of one and mounting a computer fan....which needless to say was great for air movement, useless for cooling. After some research most ideas were to far fetched or to expensive. I settled on this idea though, take 2 inch pvc tube and put it through the hole made for the fan, connect all the vivs together with pipe and plumb that pip through a decent sized refrigerator. Then using a pretty good size cfm fan to blow the colder air through the pvc and into the vivariums. Now maybe I have missed something along the way more experienced people will catch for me, but I believe this could work fine. We don't need a 50 degree drop, just 10, and with some tinkering with monitoring systems, I think it would be ok. The only issue I see would be losing humidity, but if it only stayed on long enough to keep the temp down, and was followed by the misting system it could possibly work. 

Ideas....and I know this topic has been discussed, but this was started to get opinions on this idea before I went out and started spending money.


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## TheCoon (Feb 8, 2011)

I would place a temperature controller on the refrigerator (if it doesn't already have one) so that you aren't blowing 35-38F air directly into the tanks.


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## Tincman (Jan 18, 2013)

I would love to see some more creative ideas on this topic added as well, great idea to post. Heat is in my opinion the number one killer of our Home kept Dart frogs. At least from what Ive seen in my area. As far as helping keep tanks cool, Keep Tanks Ventilated properly with the warmer air inside the enclosures circulating out of the tank gradually or periodically is beneficial. Keep tanks as low in the room as possible if needed during heat waves (heat rises, so lower tanks= cooler tanks, in desperate times you can also reverse light cylces or just cut lighting and use room light form windows, its enough for frogs to see and eat & your plants wont die in a week of not using your light) The PC fans are a great Idea being that tanks are typically a lot warmer then room temperature, this will cycle out the heat buildup & circulate the air in the process, to avoid drying out put the fans on a timer to run in a few intervals throughout the day). Try to pay special attention to tank temps vs room temps & how they relate, knowing this will help you identify problem room temps that will yield problem tank temps... temp gunning your tanks when for example the room is 78-82 degrees would be helpful..You may find that an 80 degreee room can yield a 88 degree tank (Especially in elevated enclosures with heat from underlying Lighting on a rack)if your lighting gives off a lot of heat that then travels to certain enclosures that have as most have, a restricted airflow, youre essentially creating a slow cooker. I have spent a lot of money on frogs that I love & done a lot of thinking about the topic at hand as it is unacceptable to me when even one frog perishes due to my negligence. I go through a grieving process & dont want to speak to anyone for a while when a frog dies due to my own ignorance & I have taken some steps to prevent repeating mistakes. A lot of it is just common sense.. in summer months near me in NY a lot of good frogger friends when new to the hobby have lost collections or most of their frogs in just one small 3 day heat wave because they neglected to address issues before they arrive or neglected to realize how sensitive frogs little bodies are to an influx in temp. if it is not practical to use an AC which I recommend(the easiest way to do it for me is to simply temp control the room as I have at least 50 tanks & cant manipulate them all as easily as I can adjust the one room, you can simply place all of your tanks on the ground if possible & even reverse the light cycles in heat waves. If this is impossible also look into lighting that doesnt add much heat to your tanks. There is a huge difference between how much heat, how the heat travels & even the energy consumption of the lighting commonly used on vivaria today. if you have a medium sized collection like most froggers do, perhaps cutting to a more energy efficient lighting will reduce your energy enough to temp control the room (you can message me about lighting, I have some knowledge of lights that are low consumption, low heat &have no motive to sell you stuff being that half of the things I will recommend I may not sell. if not just try monitoring the weather outside & maybe keep an air conditioner on a thermostat to only come on when temps are dangerously high in the room.. IN either scenario go with the PC Fans as they will help reduce the build up of heat within the enclosures, but youd need to set them up on timers on each tank to be effective & not over-dry tanks potentially. The refrigerator idea sounds complicated, but then again Im a white collar guy & Id mess up a mistking installation without help!lol PM me about your lighting man, we can try to cut consumption & heat generation there if possible..


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## Brooks_91 (Jan 14, 2015)

I definitely agree about the lighting, I appreciate the feedback, and really that was my goal here. I know it has been discussed, but no one has really done any work from what I have seen to get something going. I could spend the money and rent a building and put my darts there and cooling would be no issue, but a lot of people cant afford that, and quite frankly I don't want to because I like having them close enough to monitor - and we all keep them because they are fascinating to watch

I think there is something to coming up with a cooling system that is just like buying a misting system. You made a good point about the correlation between lighting, fans and heat. I use fans on all my vivs and would never think about not using them. Overall, they just don't provide enough cooling for a greater than 10 degree drop. If anyone wants to chime in I am going to try my idea, but if someone has something better, I am all for listening. It just seems in the 10+ years I have had these frogs, the main concern is heat.

How many people who have never had a dart frog, think they are tropical and don't bat an eye when the temp is 90 degrees? and furthermore, how many come here and ask why is there frog dead? 

And to address the issue of blowing 35 degree air into the viv, the thought did concern me for sure, they are tropical not artic....but this one is a little above my head because I would think the thermostat on the unit would not recognize the tank temp, so that definitely requires some research and thought....
Brooks


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## TheCoon (Feb 8, 2011)

You would need two controllers. One would control the temperature of the refrigerator and another would control the fan based on tank temperature.


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