AWC water storage in converted freezer

[dia_cero2002]

I live in Texas and my garage gets to 110 degrees or more in the summer. I store my saltwater in a 30 gallon brute trashcan. Using reef crystals with circulation pump. Problem I'm having is the water starts to smell very bad and has brown residue. I'm assuming this is due to the extreme heat. I've considered sealing a small chest freezer with Pond Armor then switching the thermostat so it will run at 60-70 degrees to store the water. What are your thoughts?

 

[MrGisonni]

I have natural seawater in a decorative "rain barrel" next to my aquarium, and never have had a problem. I might just be the heat

 

[Joe31415]

Problem I'm having is the water starts to smell very bad and has brown residue. I'm assuming this is due to the extreme heat

It's a common problem. I found leaving it uncovered made a huge difference. The whole area around the salt water bucket smelled awful, without a cover, I don't notice anything at all. The brown residue is still there, but I mostly ignore it and a few times a year I drag the garbage can outside or over to a sink and clean it.

How the heat affects this and whether or not your idea would be worthwhile, I don't know.

If you do this, make sure this chest freezer can handle all that weight. That's going to be several hundred pounds of water sitting flat on the bottom. I assume the feet/structure will be okay, but I'd worry about the plastic shell.
You may also need a powerhead in there, but I'm not sure, as that'll depend on where the heat is removed from. If the coils are behind the side walls, I'm thinking you'll get some convection in there that will keep it moving, but if that's not the case, I think you'll end up with either the side walls freezing over and/or the cool water sitting at the bottom and the warm water hanging out at the top. And depending on where the temperature is read from, that could cause other issues, either with it never running or always running.

Another issue you may run into is that the freezer, not really meant to handle a load quite like this, might struggle to control the temperature. It'll depend on where the t-stat sensor/bulb is and what type of tstat it's using. If you run into issues there, I think you could get around them by setting the t-stat as low as possible and then using an external t-stat, with a probe submerged in the water, and use that to connect/disconnect power to the freezer. And, like before, I'd recommend a powerhead to keep the water moving.
This method would also be helpful if you can't find a freezer that maintains 70+ degrees.

TLDR, leave the lid off and see what happens. Also, search the forum, as I mentioned, the smell and residue are nothing out of the ordinary.