It Never Rains But It Pours

[N0body Of The Goat]

Moved fish around Sunday to isolate the psychotic Lionhead Cichlid parents and their ~35 fry.

Get back from work today and find the garage tank has dropped to 19Cwhile it temporarily contains my four Leopard Bushfish and two Synodontis brichardi, the Rena Smart Heater 300W has failed, strangely fish not looking too bothered considering. Ordered two Visitherm 300W heaters from Aquacadabra, but I have no spare heaters right now. Dilemma about what to do, catching all six fish will be a nightmare after adding some new bogwood recently, only positive is it is going to be a very mild night down here tonight. One option is to run an extension down to the garage and hook up my second Rena 300W and a Juwel 250W, relying on room temperature to keep the temp of the Rio240 and 48x12x15 up until the new heaters arrive.

Go inside to find my four young Hoplos unusually static in the Rio240, almost huddled around the other Rena Smart Heater. Temperature is fine, but shocked to find an ammonia spike of <0.6mg/l, so massive water change and overdose of Seachem Prime.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

That stinks.


I would recommend your suggestion. Putting the heaters into the tank in the garage is going to allow those fish to be fine. Then, you could raise your house temp (or use a small portable heater, if you have one) to keep the ambient room temp higher for the other tanks. Personally, I wouldn't worry about the 48x12x15 tank. That one should have enough thermal mass to hold a fairly nice temp overnight... the bigger concern would be the 240L. That one might drop more, given its higher surface to volume ratio, plus its smaller thermal mass available. And if the room temp matches fairly closely to the tank temp, the thermal difference will be fairly small and the temp won't drop much. Overall, the tank won't get any cooler than the ambient temp of the room.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Thanks for the input, eaglesaquarium, going to let the heaters cool down for 30 minutes and then run the extension down to the garage. We can turn the flat's storage heaters onto max input from ~66%, so the ambient temp won't get too cool and therefore not effect the two 4-footers in the short term.


The biggest moral of the story is always keep a spare heater and perhaps even a filter, in case the worst happens. The Hoplos still seem relatively inactive even after the water change, they are normally really busy all day long, will keep an eye on them tonight. Would be gutted to lose any of them, by far the friendliest fish I have and will swim through my fingers when I out my hand in the tank.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

I think you may be right. I have the spare filter already (although it runs in tandem on my tank currently), but I don't have the spare heater (and my Fluval M doesn't have a great reputation for reliability... I might need to get a spare.