Water Cooling and Fishtanks?

mikeb55121 asks: "Today I was refilling my fish tank and was thinking about water cooling for my computer. As I spilled the water on the ground I realized that I was pouring cold water in to my fish tank and that I had tropical fish and right then it struck me! If I could just hook up my fish tank and computer together so that it would use watercooling by using the water out of the fish tank to cool the processor and then go back in to the tank and keep them warm. In my head it works out just fine however I don't know if it would be practical in reality. If such is possible, it would be pretty tight since it would keep my processor, fish and me happy, all at one time! If any one actually is going to try this, please email me, as I would like to hear about your results and to know if an idea of mine actually works for once!" An interesting thought! If any of you have pulled something like this off, please share. (And post pictures if you've got 'em!)

Comments

here's some links to people using watercooling

[Squeezer]

These will get you started. The first and second links look very handy to your situation. They deal with water cooling and using a fishtank pump to pump the water over the CPU core using a home-made heat sink.

http://www.agaweb.com/coolcpu/build.htm
http://www.overclockers.com.au/techstuff/wc1/
http://www.gibtek.co.uk/hardware/watercooling.ht ml

Re:My thoughts on the subject

[cymen]

From everything I've read about Marine tanks it's the opposite way around - Marine tanks often need expensive coolers while Tropical fish tanks need heaters. Maybe it's because I'm looking at coral reef tanks (think mega lamps for the coral) and not fish only marine but I don't know any tropical fish owners who have $1,200 coolers... We've had Discus fish (like blue gills but from the Amazon) and they have quite a high temperature requirement (72? 75?).

As for the project - I'm not sure about it but one thing I'd definately do is have high flow rate and large diameter tubes. Fish crap is going to build up in that thing - especially if it is a slow flow. If the processor is a high temp AMD you might be cooking fish crap. Not good in terms of cooling and bacteria counts...

Notes

[autocracy]

People commenting on your pipes getting clogged should note that in this sort of a system, the water running through the pipes should stay in the pipes and release its heat by running the pipes into the fish tank and coiling them like a radiator from your car (back and forth at least twice).

I've never tried doing this with a CPU, and am not sure what your fish can tolerate. Find out what the ideal temp for the fish is, then stick them in a smaller tank and run your CPU on full tilt (think SETI@home or the Bovine project) for 24 hours. Watch the temp of the CPU and the tank. Your CPU should have some setup to bring itself down if the temp gets too high, and this fish tank really won't matter too much because you won't have the fish in it - right?

It should be fine, even with a smaller tank. A 55 gallon tank ought be near nothing. For tank lighting (if you do that), get some lights that don't generate heat. You should also have a tank heater if your fish needed it before. You CPU running at it's max constantly should still not come within more than one degree of what the fish is willing to tolerate.

CORROSION!

[prisoner-of-enigma]

As has probably been stated (but I shall restate) corrosion is the enemy of watercooling setups far more than most people give credit for. If you don't put some sort of anti-corrosion additive into your water, you're going to have black or greenish water (depends on waterblock material, copper or aluminum) in about four days. Forget algae growth and all that which might take weeks, corrosion will destroy your system in no time.

Think I'm wrong? Go to www.overclock-watercool.com and look at the links on water additives like Redline's Water Wetter. Without it, the system had black water and a fouled pump in a couple of days. Of course, Water Wetter will swiftly kill your fish, too, so that's not such a "hot" idea.

If you really want to do this you'll have to build a water-to-water heat exchanger. This is going to be a lot of trouble but if you really want to this would be kinda neat (in a geeky way). If you're unfamiliar with heat exchangers, look up info on nuclear reactors, who have two coolant loops. One is "hot" (radioactive) that cools the nuclear core itself (analagous to your processor), the second is the "outside" loop that never mixes with the "hot" loop but picks up heat from it via a heat exchange ("outside" analogous to your fishtank).

Oh, by the way, you should check out the thermal dissapation figures of the processor you're talking about. My Athlon 1800+ dual setup (watercooled, by Koolance.com) puts out about 80W of heat per processor. I have five of these (I do 3D graphics) and they warm the room in the winter without any heat. Unless you have a truly massive fishtank (large thermal sink) you're going to overheat your fish. They won't boil, but it would definitely kill them.