Fish Tank In Cold Room?

[scully931]

Hi,

I just joined the forum. Haven't had a fish tank in ages and the only one I ever had was just a little one filled with a couple guppies and two neato frogs.

This may be a dumb questions, but is there anyway I can have a fish tank in my three season room? (sunroom) It sometimes gets down to forty degrees on really cold nights. I have spent some time looking at heaters, etc, but couldn't actually find an answer to this.

I have a small house and thought it would be a lovely addition to the room, which is filled with plants during spring, summer and fall.

Oh, also, during summer the room is nice and warm.

This is a bad idea, isn't it?

Thank you for any advice!

 

[greengoddess]

Hi,

I just joined the forum. Haven't had a fish tank in ages and the only one I ever had was just a little one filled with a couple guppies and two neato frogs.

This may be a dumb questions, but is there anyway I can have a fish tank in my three season room? (sunroom) It sometimes gets down to forty degrees on really cold nights. I have spent some time looking at heaters, etc, but couldn't actually find an answer to this.

I have a small house and thought it would be a lovely addition to the room, which is filled with plants during spring, summer and fall.

Oh, also, during summer the room is nice and warm.

This is a bad idea, isn't it?

Thank you for any advice!

As long as the water stays at a consistent temperature and is not in direct sunlight then I can't see a problem. There again, I'm a beginner too.
If it does get really cold in the room during winter then you're probably going to need a heater.

 

[betta fish]

It depends what kind of fish you want to keep, if they are tropicals they will need a heater regardless, I have 3 tropical fish tanks in my conservatory, not ideal places to house tanks due to the large temperature swings in summer and winter, I had trouble keeping the tanks cool in summer as it gets so hot in there, the heaters didn't come on much, but I found the filters were also churning out heat adding to it, keep the room cool by installing blinds, in winter the heaters have to work overtime so I wrap the back and sides of the tank with bubble wrap to conserve the heat more, if this is the only place you can house a tank by all means do but just make sure you have a heater and a thermometer handy to keep check of those swinging temps, if I had another space to house those tanks I would rather they not be in there though.

 

[waterdrop]

I remember a number of other threads with this exact same question and it seemed the concerns were many. I think there may be many who have experienced even worse problems than betta fish describes but I'd research it more. That was a very good writeup by betta fish though, covers a lot of the issues and I agree with the optimistic tone.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[scully931]

Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions.

Do you set a heater for a certain temperature causing it to come on only if it gets below a certain temp?

Let's say I need it at 60 degrees. (Not suggesting that's right at all, just to make my point) Once it drops below that in winter, the heater comes on? Then, what about if it goes above that in summer?

The tank would definately be out of the direct sunlight and I pull the shades in the summer.

Not particular on the kind of fish I have to be honest. I mean, something other than goldfish would be good, but they don't have to be especially fancy or anything.

Again, thank you for your responses.

 

[Tolak]

If you set the heater for 60 degrees, it will come on as the temperature drops below 60, and turn off when it goes above 60. The thermostat on a tank heater works very similar to your home heating thermostat in that respect.

I've found that 5 watts per gallon of heat easily maintains a temperature at 10F to 15F above the ambient room temperature with no additional insulation required. I have a 65 gallon in my basement that gets down to a room temperature of 62F kept at 82F with a 300 watt heater, a 20F increase.

To go from 40F to 80F 10 watts per gallon would be a good starting point. I would keep an additional heater on hand, maybe 3-5wpg just in case this didn't do the trick, keeping an eye on the tank thermometer in colder weather.

As stated, when the room gets warmer the heaters don't run. If you set the heaters for 80F and the room stayed at 82F they wouldn't come on.

You can get by with considerably less wattage, and a lower electric bill if you do insulate the tank when it gets colder. I get by with 1000w of heat in an outdoor 150 gallon tub when it's in the upper 20's by wrapping it in layers of moving blankets & covering the top with a thick sheet of styrofoam insulation. That's 6.6 watts per gallon. The tub itself, being plastic does offer a bit more insulation value over glass, but not a whole lot. Adding insulation is the key.

 

[Mauricia]

You're also going to want to consider heater failure in such a cold room. If your heater fails your fish will freeze to death very quickly in those temps, compared to in room temperature fish can survive a lot longer. To combat this you will want to split your wattage to multiple heaters, like 2 100 watt heaters instead of 1 200 watt heater. I would think a lot about the amount of light in the summer though, you'll really have to keep all the blinds closed or you may get a lot of algae growth. And do you know how hot the room gets? Do you have air conditioning? If it's getting to like 100 degrees you may cook your fish.

 

[scully931]

Yes, I see what you mean about splitting the heaters. Good advice.

No, the room doesn't get up to 100. On very rare occassions it gets too warm to comfortably sit in it. But, while the room is bright, the sun doesn't really come in much and I keep the ceiling fan going.

Next time I'm at the pet store I'll look at some of the tanks I'm interested now that I'm armed with this new information! (And be back with new questions, probably)

Thank you all so much!