Cooling terrarium using heatercore?

[homer]

I've been experimenting with ice, tubing, fans in order to cool my terrarium, but I'm having little success.  I'm trying to germinate tuberous drosera, and need to keep the temperature cool all the time, not just at night.  So.. to make a long story short, I won't explain what didn't work, but my ideas for a solution that will.

I'm planning on keeping 3 gallon jugs of ice in a 10 gallon aquarium with water thats in cooler next to the terrarium.  From there, I would use my spare aquarium pump to push water through tubing into a heater core ( I can get one for $38 ).  A fan mounted to the heater core would push the room air into the terrarium through the heatercore.  Simple enough, but would this work??  The terrarium is 48" x 11" x 12".  Room temp is 70-75 F on average, and I would prefer to lower this by 10 F on a  consistent basis.  I'm hoping the 3 gallons ice in the tank would provide enough cooling capacity to work for a few days on its own... kind of a short-term automated setup.

I have read up on previous articles in this forum; saw terms like peltier cells, heaterblock, waterblock.  (the last 2 I don't know what they are).  

Any advice?  I would appreciate any suggestions.

thanks,
Homer

 

[Casper]

First of all, you can get a copper heater core from AutoZone for under 20 bucks, I spent like 16 on mine. Secondly, you would need a real effective way to cool the water flowing through the heater core. If you want your tank at 65* you would probably want your water at 50*.

A waterblock is made to cool a computer processor. Basically its a big chunk of copper with micro-channels and an inlet and outlet for water to flow in. Water flows in, transfers heat to the water and so on. Shortly I am going to experiment in cooling my tank with it.

Heaterblock was probably referring to a heat sink for a chip.

You could, in theory, cannibalize a cheapo Styrofoam cooler, fill it with ice and a little water and put your hose in there (with some modification of course so an Ice cube doesn't clog it up) That would be pretty cheap, but high maintenance, would probably need a new bag of ice daily.


Just something off the top of my head


Casper