Temp

[Kymaro]

I'm concerned for my tank. The weather has been into the high 90's and only getting down into the 70's at night for the past 4 or 5 day here. It's gotten to the point now that my tank has been running around 83* for 2 days now. I performed a 15g water change with 78* water. (slowly added over 30 min) It brought the temp down to 80.6*. I added an extra blower and faced it to the surface, glass lid removed, lights left off and a regular fan blowing across the top of the tank. Is there more or something else I should be doing? Or is it something not to get concerned over?

 

[GimpyFin]

IMO, 83 is nothing to be concerned over. Most people keep their tanks in the 75-80 range, but there are also people that keep them in the low 80's. Air conditioning or a chiller are your best bets for cooling it down, though.

 

[scooter31707]

Do you have a sump? If so you can get you about 2-3 2liter soda bottles and clean them good. Once clean fill them up with RO/DI water and put them in the freezer to so they can freeze. Once your tank begins to get to hot, get a bottle out and stick it into your sump. Once that one has melted, replace with another and so on. Works putting good for me.

 

[bertoni]

If the humidity isn't too high, a fan should do a lot of cooling, in my experience, although the ATO can consume a lot more water. I regularly had temperatures hit the 90s in an apartment once upon a time, but the tank temperature never rose above my set point. The humidity was probably around 30-50%, though.

 

[Kymaro]

Temps in the mid 90's with humidity around 70%, down right miserable! Thank you everyone, I'll try the frozen bottles, but i'll start off small and work my way up depending on how my tank responds.

 

[Fish Keeper82]

My tank has been running at 83 steady for months now in fact since the start of spring time when I added more lights. I was not even worried about it until I added an APEX controller and am looking at the Temp constantly. I will be adding better ventilation to get it down. Just opening one of my glass tops lowered it down to 82 so changing half the glass tops for screens and adding some computer fans should do wonders for me.

But at 83 degrees all summer long in the heat of Texas the tank is still doing quite well. Just added about 10 SPS in the last 2 months and all are growing at a much greater rate than I ever thought.
So I wouldn't panic at 83 just work on getting it down so you have some wiggle room for unplanned temp spikes like Air Conditioning failure and such.

 

[BlackTip]

With the current heat wave, my tank temp is around 82F for the past couple of weeks.

 

[Buzz1329]

IMO, 83 is nothing to be concerned over. Most people keep their tanks in the 75-80 range, but there are also people that keep them in the low 80's. Air conditioning or a chiller are your best bets for cooling it down, though.

Yep, 83 is fine. I use cheapo clip-on fans over sump and/or tank surface to keep temp at about 82-83 in summer months. The fans are plugged into basic (i.e., cheap) controller (Reef Keeper Light) that turns fans on when water temp reaches 82 and turns heaters on when temp drops below 79.

Good luck,

Mike

 

[LeslieP]

I don't think you are in trouble if you are in the low 80's, but the clip on fan blowing across the top is a good idea, and you can kill the lights for a couple of days.

If that isn't good enough, then you could add ice cubes of RO/DI water instead of your regular top off water. I also used to put large ice packs in zip lock bags and float those in the tank, swapping them out when they thawed - similar to the frozen water in the soda bottle. Now my tank is in the finished basement and I don't have to worry about it anymore.

 

[Skaters216]

i was having swings from 76 at night going upto 84 during the day before it really got into the 90's the last month to month and a half i hooked up my chiller and maintain 77% degrees all day no,,,, "CHILLER THE WAY TO GO",,, i did the freezing RODI water for two weeks and it got annoying watching the swing of temp anyway.. IMO

 

[Kymaro]

I also used to put large ice packs in zip lock bags and float those in the tank, swapping them out when they thawed - similar to the frozen water in the soda bottle..

This what I did, Floated ice packs, I got my temp down to 78 to 79 degrees and it's been keeping that now on it's own. Fished loved poking at bags, they were probably thinking "How the heck did an iceburg make it clear to the Caribbeans?" :dance:

 

[bertoni]

Okay, that sounds like good progress.

 

[LeslieP]

I'm glad that it worked for you. I did this for years when I lived in that house. I had mostly LPS and some softies and never lost any corals or any fish. I don't know if it would be adequate for more sensitive corals though.