I have a question that has me stumped. :blink:
One of my 55g tanks is in the diningroom, Far end of the ducting
for the cooling system, so this room gets into the mid 80's in the
summer. This afternoon the room temp was 80f but the tank temp
soared to 85f before I caught it and turned fans on over the tank.
Question: How can tank temp be higher than room temp?
:huh:
Any thermal engineers on this forum?
any suggestions as to keep tank cool, without spending LARGE
AMOUNTS of green stuff?
Summer isn't even in full bloom yet and I am having trouble.
Will have to fix it SOON. (Summer days here average around
100f to 105f, But it's a dry heat...LIKE YOUR OVEN!) :D
I'm in Australia and battle each year in summer with our heat. I'm not sure of the psysics behind it but my tanks also reach higher temps then the room tempreture. Height plays some role and proximity to windows etc. in my case. I have noticed though as I have 5 tanks in one room that allthough they all top out above a desirable tempreture it does vary a fair bit from tank to tank. Height seems a big factor as I have 2 tanks housed under other ones within the stands and these are fair few degrees cooler, and one closer to the side of my lounge with a glass door/window seems to also be lower (don't ask me why but this is noticable even with the glass door closed all day).
For attempting to lower the temp the only sure way is through a chiller or using airconditioning a lot which are both really costly to justify. Other then that about all you can do is either (unless you have wet/dry filtration set-up/dry ice)...
*use fans directed at the water surface (allthough you'll lose a lot of water through evaporation and it will be hard on your electricity bill).
*Highly airate the tank. Use airstones, bubble wands or power filters with a venturi attachment.
*Alternate frozen bottles of water between the tank and your freezer (float until thawed). This is relatively effective allthough depends on tank volume and how much freezer space you have to spare.
Other then those it's a tricky problem. With a cold environment you can easily just purchase and run a heater fairly cheaply but when it's too hot the options are really limited unless you have the money to invest in a low power consuming chiller (which is a big innitial investment in comparison).
I've found through personal experience a majority of my fish will tolerate temps upto about 88-90f without major issue, not to say that's safe I'm just offering you a threshold from experience if you do find you are unable to control it at any stage. It is known to lead to potential long term health issues in some particular fish though so do whatever you can to try and remain atleast under 84-86 if it's within your power.
I have to agree With FNESR those are some good Ideas. What I do is give them more frequent water changes. Other than that I never had a problem.
I've run into this problem recently, also. What you can do is buy a clip on fan and clip it onto the side of the tank so it blows across the top of the water. I'd mess around with the settings until you found the perfect speed. It's cheap, too.