Hot enough for ya???
 

That's right; it's that time of year again folks! The first real blast of heat that freaks us all out so much while we're at work & our tanks sit at home all toasty warm...
How's everyone doing? Any horror stories or is everyone kissing their A/C's & chillers? Share your joy, share your pain, we'll listen (if we can hear you over the sounds of boiling Acro's in the background of course).

My tank is sitting pretty at 81 degree. 24/7 with my temp control. I have an AC unit for the house, so that keeps everything nice :)

Simple solution for me is to simply cut back the photoperiod. Lights go on at 11 and go off at 3 before it gets too hot. Tank is at 82 . No worries from here on in..

*kisses chiller* :razz:

My set temp is 80,
Mine peaked at about 82.4, But its on its way back down now.

My temp is holding at 78 / 79. Thanks to having my tanks in the cooool basement. I will reduce the time the lights are on for the next few days.

I dont know why all of the sudden my tank finds itself at 83-84 at mid-day, and 80 at night, even with the A/C on. I've always had it at 79. I think the Seios I have are garbage heat producers.

Im not having any problems due to the temp though... it rose slowly, and it doesnt fluctuate too much. I think im going to DYI a chiller though now...

Normally at 78C, today reached 81C but holding steady. Gotta let in some cool night air tonight. But even our ground floor suite is starting to heat up a bit.

Anthony

I'm with Christy...kissing the chiller on the reef tank...the other tanks have to have the lids open and lighting periods lessened! ( and a small prayer that no one decides to carpet surf out the open tops! )

I haven't gone over 79.5 yet. Hard vented the tank outside and have 2 5 inch fans on fairly quick speed but could go higher yet. AC and chiller are doing what they're supposed to, I haven't changed the lighting schedule.

*wipes brow*

I have been simulating a nasty massive storm the past few days. Turned up my Tunxe wavemaker and turned of my halides. Just actinics for 2 days and 8 hours a day.

even with lights out I think I peaked at 84. then back to 80 in the morning. I have a large fan over sump!!

Ya, the chiller is pumping away, tank stays at 79 all day. Which is good, because my condo probably hits 90 by the end of the day! I need a condo chiller for us!

Glad to report our AC is keeping everyone cool :)

We put our indoor thermometer/humidity reader out on our balcony on hot days. Yesterday, it hit 41 C in the mid-day sun. Was up at 4 a.m. this morning and it was 20 C out there. By 7:30 a.m. it had already climbed to 22 C in the shade. High expected to be 33 C here today, but on our balcony it's always at least a degree higher. Heat wave forecast goes into next week, but sure hope it cools down some before then. Can't stand AC on at night with no fresh air :(

my tanks are geting hit hard sence there all nano/pico, yesterday my 2.5 peaked at 90! and my xenia has melted but worest is i havent seen my firefish today:sad: , its at 84-87 with the lights on and my 1g is at 88 but the cleaner shrimp and coral seem to be ok, i wasent realy ready for the heat sence last year my room wasent that hot but the last two days were bad iam going to have to find some fans and hope they help or that this heat gos away soon or iam not sure what will happen:neutral:

I better check the temp on my tank!

*walks over to side of tank*
*looks at thermometer*
86.7
*buried head in sand*

I usually just open up my stand on a hot day and blow a really powerful room fan into the stand - it's usually able to drop it by a good 4 degrees on a scorcher.

Holding steady at 81* as I have a good fan cooling down the sump, I don't like the 2gl a day top off thing tho :mrgreen:

With no one home, AC on, fan on sump, top proped open, My tank still hit 84.9.:cry: Since I am going on vacation for 9 days, i can't risk it. Finally broke down and bought a chiller. It will get to run for a week before I leave so hopefully i can iron out any potential problems, appears to be working good so far though.

Currently 29.9C with one MH light on. So I have just turned off all lights now. Room temperature is 30.5C using the same thermometer. I guess the evaporative cooling on my tank is making it cooler than room temperature by a bit.

I think the easiest solution for tanks without chillers and what not... just cut back your photoperiod. Turn the lights on in the AM , and off once it hits noon.. keep 'em off til later in the evening.. turn 'em back on again if need be. That's what I am doing.... 20g with 250w HQI in a bedroom and I am at 83-84... not too bad considering.

Except for the fact that it is barely getting under 20C at night here. I wake up in the morning and the tank is still 83F, because the house doesnt even have a chance to cool down. How do you cool down a tank colder then the air?

Global warming i tell you... :twised: Gotta get central A/C by for next summer!

You can do that through evaporative cooling which is just having a fan blowing across the top of the water surface.

http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/...SettingUp.html

"Through the proper use of fans (evaporative cooling), you can usually drop a tank's temperature by a good 5 degrees. Fans are great! "

http://www.coralplantations.com/pages/heatissues.htm

"The effect of evaporative cooling is greater than most people realize. A small desk fan mounted above a tank blowing across the water can drop the temperature by 3 degrees or so depending on the tank volume. "

http://www.vividaquariums.com/troubleshooting.asp

It is possible to cool an aquarium by 5 or 6 degrees using this method of ventilation and evaporative cooling.

Bev, thanks for using Celsius. That's the only unit that I understand. :biggrin:

My chiller has been awesome.....today I noticed it wasnt keeping up though....here the filter cloth on the intake was very dirty. All is well again! Before I had the chiller, I was putting frozen 2l bottles of water in the sump before work....did the job.

My tank runs at 85*F these last few days. No lights, chiller on for 12hrs/day :eek:

Unfortunatly for me, the drop in chiller pumps all the heat into my apartment. Ambient was about 30*C. Night is about 25*C.

We seem to be pretty lucky because the tanks are downstairs in a walkout basement. However, it's been stinkin' hot and I have actually just been monitoring the temp by watching the clams and the fish. If they are happy, I am.

I figured I had better pop in a thermometer with all this heat talk, and the temp was 30C so I guess I'll shut the lights down for a few days.

Well, seeing as I have nothing but live rock I don't care this summer about the temp, my chiller is shut down, no lights on the new tank as all it has is water. (don't want to add anything till painting and new skimmer are done, well maybe the rock soon) but if I had to keep things cool a chiller would be the only way for this weather as evaporative cooling like Sam said is good for 5 or 6 degrees, but on my tank before the chiller I could easily get up to 100+ degrees so 5 or 6 didn't cut it as my tank used to get up to low 90's on hot days like this.

Central air is good for a little bit of cooling and if you don't have MH it will probably be enough, but remember air is a very pour source of cooling power as it heat value is about 1/4 that of water so you would need a lot of cool air flow to remove the heat caused by MH light and I don't know of any central ACs that are affordable that could keep up to the demands of a large tank.

Steve

Basement sump works for me :mrgreen: . My 175g hasn't got above 84

Over the weekend we had temps reaching 35C, in fact by 11:00AM the temp already hit 30C. My tank temp maxed out at 72.9F without a chiller. I guess having the sump/fuge located in the basement really helps keeping the upstairs tank cool - not to mention having central A/C is a plus in keeping the tank cool.

Just an idea.. but wouldn't it be better to get an AC that will keep the room and the tank cool?

Before this heatwave I already began to migrate my tank to a different time period. My lights are on at 12 midnight and run until 7am... Actinics are on from 6-10 at night so I can see them when I get home from work... Fan is on all day. to keep the tank cooler than the room.

My thoughts are its cooler and night, and why wouldn't I turn it on then rather than in in the morning or early evening when it's still considerably hot?

I have a heat pump on my house. It costs about a dollar a day to run. I keep my 150 gallon tank upstairs and my tank temps vary between 76 and 78. I have a pretty good exhaust fan which creates negative air pressure to draw the cool 73 degree air into the lighting area. I have two fans blowing over the tank. Water overheating problems are not an issue for me and it's strictly due to the ambient temperature of the house. Bill

Was going to switch to night lighting but forgot trying to get ready for vacation:redface:
Came home after 4 days near Nelson with 40c temp.
both tanks had lost over 20% water volume and temp in the high 80's
My 10G nano lost primary cerculation but did have a small pump moving some water and my bigger 33 had lots of water movment, was the water cascaded down several inchs to the new water level!!! :eek:
To my surprise everybody was well and waiting for a nice drink of water. :drinking:

reply
 

Mine peeked at 88-89F the other day. No ill effects though, maybe my thermometer is wrong.

My clowns have been doing the mating dance a lot these days, coincidence?

I may try cutting down my photo period a bit, I don't want to tempt fate.

I took my filter off my chiller pump to clean it the other day because the chiller was having trouble keeping up. I took the front cover off the chiller too so the filter didn't clog. My only mistake was I forgot to plug the chiller pump back in afterwards and came home to an 88 degree tank after work. The fish were breathing pretty heavily but I plugged the pump back in and slowly brought the temp back down to 78 after 8 hours. I consider myself very luck because with the amount of lighting on my tank I could have cooked everything very quickly. I'm please to report that there were no fatalities and everything seems to be doing quite well. The only thing I can manage is the heat in my condo. Even with an 11000 BTU air conditioner, it's no match for the amount of heat that my chiller pumps out. The coolest day in my condo all year was the day I forgot to plug the chiller pump back in.

Hehe I agree with that one. My basement gets stinking hot with the amount of heat the chiller pumps out. When I can't stand the heat anymore I just go visit the freezer aisle of the local grocery store :razz:

Was approaching 85°F (should have extended the fans beyond the MHs) but all that's behind me now.

Got the central AC installed last week, I'm happy, wife's happier and the tank is running at about a steady 79°.

Xtasia is right, My 230 Gal with MH lighting is in an AC enviroment and never raises above 72-73F even on 35 degree days. BTW I bet you its probaly cheaper to run a properly sized central AC system than a chiller. Then again without more info I cant say...

I would say your fans are doing most of the work. Central AC does help, by lowering the air temp enabling it to pick up more heat before it is equalized, but on its own usually isn't enuf, the question that remains now is how much water are you losing a day due to evaporative cooling? I was able to keep my tank under 82 with fans but I was losing 5 gal a day on a 90 gal tank, with the chiller I only lose 2 gal a day so that is a difference of 3 gal a day less water vapor being pumped into my house and up to 100 gal less of RO / month I have to make.

Steve

Without the chiller running, how cool do you keep your condo during a heat wave? If your AC can maintain a 21C temp during the hotest day of the year even with your MH lights on, There is a good chance you should be able to maintain a much cooler water temperature in your tank. Right now your cooling your tank by stealing BTUs from your AC unit as the heat rejection from your chiller is using capacity from your central AC unit therfore making you chiller work harder - vicious circle.