Temperature Rising...

[Carecalmo]

Hi there! I've got a little problem. The air conditioning in my house is broken. It quit sometime today. It's really hot around here, in the high 90's. Right now it's 84 Fahrenheit in my tank. My fish are used to it being somewhere between 76 to 80 Fahrenheit. It's midnight here and it's that temperature. I can only imagine what will happen when morning comes. What can I do? How hot can it can in there before it's dangerous?

 

[fluttermoth]

Most fish can take temps of 30°C for a short time (a few days probably) before they start to suffer, although lack of oxygen can be a problem; make sure you've got enough surface disturbance from your filter.

If you think the fish might be suffering (heavy breathing, gasping at the surface) you can add a few ice cubes, do a cool water change or add some soft drinks bottles that have been half filled with water and then frozen; which method depends on how over-hot the fish are.

 

[Carecalmo]

Thank you fluttermoth for replying. :]

I took a bit of water out the tank, maybe about 20 or so centimeters. They're hovering at around 30°C and right now we're about to hit the hottest time of the day. The ice and bottles haven't helped much, a change of 1 degree at best. I'm checking it every 30 minutes for now. If it gets any warmer I'm going to do a cool water change. They're not showing any signs of distress though, thankfully. The air conditioning will hopefully be fixed today or tomorrow. Guess I can only keep monitoring them.