Water Temp Question

DebraAustin · Apr 15, 2006

Hi,

It has suddenly gotten very warm here (85+F) and we are not running our AC, yet. The water temp on my fish tank has gone from 80 deg to 86 deg. I think this is too warm, but am not sure how to lower it without causing shock to my finned friends. They all look fine, but seem a bit sluggish. Any suggestions?

Debra

Qays · Apr 15, 2006

ahh! your gona fry them! lol

It should be below 80 and your risking that temprature.

Declorinated ice cubes do well!!

deni · Apr 15, 2006

Debra said:
Hi,

It has suddenly gotten very warm here (85+F) and we are not running our AC, yet. The water temp on my fish tank has gone from 80 deg to 86 deg. I think this is too warm, but am not sure how to lower it without causing shock to my finned friends. They all look fine, but seem a bit sluggish. Any suggestions?

Debra

Try floating bags of ice-cubes in the tank, or adding cooler water then normal when you do a water change. Your fish may be sluggish because warmer water contains less oxygen.

Qays · Apr 15, 2006

yeah, floating bag of ice is a great idea!

i would have just thrown a few ice in there!

Ice will cool the water slowly.

DebraAustin · Apr 15, 2006

Thanks for the input. So far I've turned off the light and opened the hood and the temp is down to 84. I've just floated a bag of ice cubes in the tank and will watch it closely don't want it to get too cool too fast, either. I think I'm going to have to move my tank

. We had just moved into the house when I got the tank and it was winter. With summer coming on I think it is going to get some direct sunlight, bad, bad, bad.

Debra

dgwebster · Apr 15, 2006

ok this may sound stupid, but lower your tank too. if you have a basement, this is a perfect place. heat is a convection force, lower areas will be cooler naturally, although the effect will be very small, every bit counts i think.

def move away from window views and also move to an east facing room - they dont get as warm as other rooms as they get sunrise light only.

DebraAustin · Apr 17, 2006

dgwebster said:
ok this may sound stupid, but lower your tank too. if you have a basement, this is a perfect place. heat is a convection force, lower areas will be cooler naturally, although the effect will be very small, every bit counts i think.

def move away from window views and also move to an east facing room - they dont get as warm as other rooms as they get sunrise light only.

Thanks for the ideas. Unfortunately we live in a one story house and I don't think they would like being in the crawl space. :lol:

I am trying to figure out a way to rearrange the room they are in so that there is no light hitting the tank at any time of the day. Right now it is only very, very late in the afternoon and then through a bamboo shade, so it is very filtered.

I did manage to get the temp back down to 80, by doing a partial water change with cool water. That is the temp that they are regularly at, so they are comfortable again. I know some fish require cooler temps, but these guys seem happy at 80 and for some reason I can't find a heater that keeps the water cooler. Have tried 2 so far and both keep it at 80. They don't seem stressed and the lfs said that would be an OK temperature (the real fish store not the box variety). The only other thing I haven't tried is getting a heater for a tank smaller than what I have and trying that. Now that it is summer I might try that, but in the winter I didn't want to chance the water getting too cold.

Unfortunately the ice cubes melted in about two minutes and didn't make any change at all. Yesterday was another hot one and I broke down and turned on the AC, just so my fish would be happy. We actually were out hiking all day, but they were nice and cool when I returned :good:

Debra

morgan · Apr 17, 2006

Hi, I just looked on e-bay and you can get fans for cooling your tank. As your tank if getting a bit too warm it might be worth looking at.

They were about £18.

xamdarb · Apr 17, 2006

not trying to be a thread jacker at all but how cold can you get before you hurt your fish

smmetz · Apr 17, 2006

It depends on the fish I think, most can handle 75 degrees just fine. Some can handle 70. Most tropical fish are not going to do well below that. Take a quick look at my database, you can sort the 82 fish by any field, including min_temp. After this week, I'll start to have time to add more fish to it also.

my fish database, sorted by minimum temperature: (the temp columns are quite a bit over on the right, have to scroll to see it)
http

/www.aquariumdatabase.com/query/fish...derby&value=a21