Nutter

ONLY WORKS WITH CANISTER FILTERS THAT HAVE THE MOTOR UP THE TOP!!

Simply get a foam fish transport box, the kind used by aquariums for shipping fish. Cut a hole in the lid that will fit your canister through while still being a snug fit. Now cut the lid into two pieces going straight through the middle of the hole you just cut for the canister filter. Place your canister in the box, fill the box with ice, water & some salt. Put the two halves of the lid on the box & turn the filter back on. That's it, done. It works even better if you have long hoses on your filter & you can run those into the box as well.
It means being able to make plenty of ice but you can just use frozen 2lt bottles of water. Putting them in a foam box with the canister filter is far more effective than putting them in the tank. Just make sure you have water in the foam box as well as the frozen bottles.

I use this in conjunction with styrofoam sheets, the kind that go under the tank. I just tape the styro sheets to the back & sides of the tank. I have a spare sheet of styro that I tape to the front of the tank on really hot days. You can glue some of the printed tank background to the sheets so it isn't so yuk to look at or stressful for you fish.

I regularly get weeks on end that are over 40C using these things lets me keep my tank temp between 24 & 26C. If I just do the float bottles full of ice & the fan with no lights on technique the temp will soon be up around 30C.

Tavel

since it only works with top-mounted motor filters...everyone else can put a few feet of extra tubing on their output side and coil it into a bucket filled with ice water.

peacemaker92

Cool idea! I should get a canister filter... haha Thanks for posting it, Nutter.

Nutter

Tavel has the right idea there. Adding extra hose to the output & running it through the ice should work quite well. I actually find having the hoses in the ice to be the most effective part of it, that's why I suggested the extensions or long hoses before. I have about 10ft of the inlet & 10ft of the outlet hose coiled up in the ice.

Think of how to modify it & improve the design for your own individual uses. Then let me know so I can improve my design to.