Italian company Croci has added a cooling fan to its portfolio of Amtra branded aquatic products. This small clip-on fan is speed and temperature adjustable and will come just at the right time for nano tank owners who are searching for a compact cooling solution this summer. Temperature can be preset by way of an onboard digital display and the fan will come on to cool the water until that temperature is reached. We’ve looked at the product, the literature, and the video, but we can’t see any wired temperature probe anywhere so we are presuming that the temperature the fan adheres to is ambient, not water. If this is the case a certain amount of guesswork and user calibration may be necessary to work out what to set the fan to, to get the water temperature where they want it. A wired temperature probe would be much better.
Flip the fan over though and you’ll be surprised to see both a small LED array and a ring of light-emitting diodes around the edge of the fan. Totalling 4.5 watts, these blue-only LEDs are marketed just as a moonlight by the manufacturer. If these were beefed up, with white included this LED light and cooler in one could make for a nifty pico lamp providing light and fan cooling where necessary. If Amtra made a few subtle changes like a temperature probe and a more powerful light, the innovative Borea 80 LED could prove more useful to the growing reefing community. It could even be used in sumps to light up algae beds and cool water at the same time.
