Winter Reefs: Do you lower your temps?
 

I have heard that some people lower the temps in their reef tanks in the winter. Just out of curiosity, who does this and why? And what do you lower your temps to? For my tank I target 77-79 pretty much year round. I start to freak out when it hits 81 and higher..

Never even thought about this. I just let my controller do it's thing.

:pop2:

I keep mine at 82, I know a few others that keep it there as well. I find the growth is much faster.

I have no idea why people would lower down the temp in the winter.

I don't see much merit to doing this as a matter of routine practice. However, some fishes can be induced to naturally spawn by tricking them into thinking they are in winter (temp & photoperiod) and then increasing parameters to simulate arrival of summer.

http://www.lib.noaa.gov/retiredsites...ort28/Holt.pdf

Ya, at 82 I'd imagine metabolism is off the charts! I don't know that I have the 'nads to run mine that high though. Seems it wouldn't take much to tip the tank past 82 and then you're in danger territory.

Yeah it's a little high for some, but so far I haven't had a problem! Fingers crossed!

26 degrees year round. I used to raise it in the Summer when I had MH to reduce temperature fluctuations, but with LEDs it stays stable all year.

I can't imagine that the temperature of tropic water around reefs changes much in the winter. Remember, most of the places where we find the corals we keep don't actually have winter. Most places just have storms and, depending on the time of the year, it comes from the left or the right.

The only region of the water that changes significantly in temperature would be surface waters with the changes in rainfall. Yes, some areas deeper down will change with changes in currents but this, at least in my mind, changes less frequently that the weather.

There are a number of papers that show corals that experience regular fluctuations in temperature are actually less susceptible to temperature-related bleaching than corals that have normally stable temperature conditions. So, there may actually be something to varying your temperature on a semi-regular basis.

Historically I have just set my temperature and let it change with the weather (in the summer getting up to 82F and down to 78 in the winter. However, after this summer (where my tank hit 87F during a heat wave) I've now added a chiller and so will probably just be keeping my temp constant now.

When I use to run halides I'd keep my temp up around 80-82 in the summer cause I couldn't get it cooler so made sense just keep it warm to avoid large swings. Come winter it could be kept around 78 so I'd adjust. Only reason was to save some power and keep the humidity down a little, not a huge difference really but that was my reasoning behind it and I figure that would be everyone else's as well. In the end it's not really about turning the temp down in the winter but rather turning it up in the summer. Now with LEDs I don't change temps because I can maintain 78 year round.