Heat!!

N

nate12345

New member
Man its hot. I live in southern California and it is burning hot. Thank God I live on the Coast and not inland or my tank would be boiling. I'm not going to say how hot my tank is, because some people might freak out. I'll reassure them that I'm doing everything, I have two fans going in the room (no A/C) one of witch is blowing on the surface of the water almost 24/7.

So my questions are, is there someone here that can give me an article or something on hot tanks and what problems they cause, and I also want to know how much chillers cost and how much it costs to maintain them, I've looked online but everything is varied.
 
I would say as long as it does not reach 90, you are okay with most fish (89 is pushing it). It also depends on what you are keeping.

Chillers are expensive. But if you are keeping expensive corals, then it might be worth it.

I live in Northern California and I think it is supposed to cool off a bit tomorrow. Let's hope.
 
Craigslist I've found to be a very good place to find chillers.
I would NEVER EVER let my tank hit 89!!!!

That's just crazy.. If my tank gets to 83 I start throwing in sealed bags of ice to get the temp down.

Get a large fan to blow ACROSS your water, don't aim it directly at it. This will cause immense evaporation (You're in so cal so I know humidity is low thus evaporation will work very well)
Be ready for toping off lots of water though...
 
I also live in socal and it is definiately hot! I had to resort to buying a chiller for my nano. I bought a JBJ arctica chiller and am really loving it. I don't know what size aquarium you have but if it's a nano, chillers will run you around $300.
 
Where in socal do you live? I also live here and it's hot. Even with A/C I'm having a little trouble. I pulled my canister out of the stand, place in a bucket and load with ice. Works well and is cheap. You can take a powerhead hooked up to flexible tubing and coil it thru a thermis loaded with ice. The power head will run the water thru the thermis and cool it as it returns to your tank. This will work until you can buy a chiller. Try Jeff's Exotic fish, give you a good deal.
 
Re: Heat!!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10688216#post10688216 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by nate12345
Man its hot. I live in southern California and it is burning hot. Thank God I live on the Coast and not inland or my tank would be boiling. I'm not going to say how hot my tank is, because some people might freak out. I'll reassure them that I'm doing everything, I have two fans going in the room (no A/C) one of witch is blowing on the surface of the water almost 24/7.

So my questions are, is there someone here that can give me an article or something on hot tanks and what problems they cause, and I also want to know how much chillers cost and how much it costs to maintain them, I've looked online but everything is varied.
Click to expand...

I live in the san fernandovalley. my thermometer in the shade on friday said 114 and today it said 110 at 1;30. i have a portable ac unit. my centralair took a dive. i live in a condo complex so im not allowed to put a unit in my window. i have 2 ceiling fans blowing one floor fan and the portable ac unit which is set at 68 degrees and the downstairs temp right now is 87 inside. the portable cant keep up. my tank got to 85 the other day. i grabbed an ex large cold pak. you know the ones for ice chests that are in a plastic casing. i floated that in my 50g. it brought it down to 82. but its back up to 86 today. i also used bags of ice and the latin popsicles called bolis. i just tossed those in to. they are like giant otter pops. im running 6 x 39w t-5's
 
I'm in the Inland SoCal. It's been around 110 all summer :) I got a chiller ($700), so no more worries other than the horrific electricity bill. It keeps the tank at a nice, stable 80F (JBJ Arctica).
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10688307#post10688307 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by funman1
Craigslist I've found to be a very good place to find chillers.
I would NEVER EVER let my tank hit 89!!!!

That's just crazy.. If my tank gets to 83 I start throwing in sealed bags of ice to get the temp down.

Get a large fan to blow ACROSS your water, don't aim it directly at it. This will cause immense evaporation (You're in so cal so I know humidity is low thus evaporation will work very well)
Be ready for toping off lots of water though...
Click to expand...

Look it up, a vast majority of coral reefs are found where water temperatures are between 80 and 89°F. The Carribeans and Indo-Pacific are often between 85 and 89°F. I am by no means saying that sustaining a tank at these temperatures is recommended. However, a fluctuation during a heat wave that reaches these temperatures for a few hours during the day is nothing to panic about.
 
Like I said, it depends on what you have in your tank. Are there even any fish in the tank yet? Your experience says 1 week.
 
I'm in the 89 range right now. not yet hit it but mayve soon if it doesn't cool off tommorow. Evaporation is a *****, but I'm not quite sure what people mean by the difference between blowing a fan across the water or blowing it right at the tank.

You guys are getting it all the way up there in Northern California too?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10692939#post10692939 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Mavrk
Look it up, a vast majority of coral reefs are found where water temperatures are between 80 and 89°F. The Carribeans and Indo-Pacific are often between 85 and 89°F. I am by no means saying that sustaining a tank at these temperatures is recommended. However, a fluctuation during a heat wave that reaches these temperatures for a few hours during the day is nothing to panic about.
Click to expand...

Do you have any reference links?
SPS won't put up with temp swings like that.
And if you do find an artice about temps being that high; I'm willing to bet it's talking going to be about the Coral Reefs Bleaching at 2 deg's higher than normal...

Letting your tank get that high and thinking it's "normal" is just plain ignorance.
 
First of all let me say that I never recommended aiming for those temperatures, merely that depending on what is in the tank you may not need to panic. I was mostly speaking about fish that live in the reefs, and if I was not clear about that I apologize. After all, with 1 week of experience I don't think the OP has any corals.

Secondly, instead of searching through my old aquatic biology books, I will give you two sites. The first is a general map of coral reefs around the world. The second is a NOAA map of temperatures around the world. This may not be as clear as some obscure article, but I don't feel like going back to doing research (long time away from that field of work):

reef locations

NOAA temps

And since you bring up bleaching, here is a site discussing how this can depend on where the corals are from as well as the fact that a few hours is not usually a problem, but a week might be. Again this is in nature, and probably does not translate to aquariums very well:

reef futures
 
Damn I am sitting here sweating at 9 pm. My tank has reached 82 and I'm lucky I live near the coast here in San Diego. My house temp got to 90 (no ac). I don’t have a chiller, and I run 6 small 6" clip on fans to keep it down. I also used some frozen water bottles as well. I also run my lights at night.

I cant wait for this to pass. The humidity has been unbearable too.

I even had to bust out my big fan, put it up on a chair, and with all the fans my temp was ok. I prefer to keep at 80 if I can though.

Even the Home Depot here is sold out of fans.

Mark
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10688307#post10688307 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by funman1
Craigslist I've found to be a very good place to find chillers.
I would NEVER EVER let my tank hit 89!!!!

That's just crazy.. If my tank gets to 83 I start throwing in sealed bags of ice to get the temp down.

Get a large fan to blow ACROSS your water, don't aim it directly at it. This will cause immense evaporation (You're in so cal so I know humidity is low thus evaporation will work very well)
Be ready for toping off lots of water though...
Click to expand...

Currently during this heat wave we are having higher humidity than normal, its definetly not a dry heat. Also while I was outside building my new stand took a look at a thermo in the shade was 106, didnt beleive it so grabbed a couple more ranged from 103 to 108. Then let it sit in sun, where I was working, after 3 minutes thermo was maxed out at 120, damn that radiant heat. Umm even without a fan I am getting massive evaperation. Every 3 to 4 hours im putting about 1/2 gallon of RO water, ATO would be nice at this time but its not like this forever here.
 
On "average" temps-
Leichter, J.J., B. Helmuth, and A. Fischer. 2006. Variation beneath the surface: quantifying complex thermal environments on coral reefs in the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Florida J. Mar. Res., 64(4): 563-588.

Kleypas, J. A., J. W. McManus, and L. A. B. Menez. 1999. Environmental Limits to Coral Reef Development: Where Do We Draw The Line? American Zoologist. 39:146- 159.

Worldwide the average yearly range is 76-86 with extremes ranging from 61-94.

On normal fluctuations-
Castillo*, K.D. and B.S.T. Helmuth. 2005. Influence of thermal history on response of Montastraea annularis to short-term temperature exposure. Marine Biology, 148(2):261-270.

Wood, R. 1999. Reef Evolution. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 414 pp.

Variations of 3-8 degrees per day are the norm in low latitudes and as much as 15 degrees per day in high latitudes. The variations are not only tolerable by the corals, they're important factors in preventing them from bleaching under elevated temps.

Just for reference, yesterday in the upper Keys it went from 88 to about 85 in a few hours. That's the coolest it's been all week.
 
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