debate about temperature

[Molly Cule]

Perusing the internet tonight I found this article comparing the fluctuations in temperature in our reef tanks compared to that of the ocean.

Reefs Magazine - The Great Temperature Debate, Part IV
(It's the 4th and final installment, you can read the other portions in past issues. They're a little lengthy, but quite interesting.)

It got me to thinking, since this isn't a local forum, does your location effect your husbandry practices (for example, are you a little bit more lax about your tank going above 84*F living in Texas as opposed to NY?) Have you noticed issues in your tank caused directly by temperature deviations? For those of you living in warmer climates, do you find that there are steady amounts of crashes throughout the year, or do they peak in the summer like in more temperate regions? This is just speculation, but it seems that it would be much more costly to maintain a healthy system in warmer regions due to the cost of chillers/AC/etc than in more temperate regions. Any thoughts?

 

[Nate82]

Definitely more costly to run a tank in texas, but it's also more costly to live in NY so who knows in the end haha. I know my Apex has my tank fluctuate temperatures according to the seasons. Even in NY I can't go a day without leaving the AC on, or the tank just gets too hot. There's only so much a 7" fan on the sump can do.. I'd be sitting very uneasy if my tank got up to 84* though...

 

[Molly Cule]

Agreed, though I'm wondering if tanks in warmer climates don't have as many issues around those temps since they probably sustain higher temperatures over longer periods of time than we do up here. I noticed that even moving from Brooklyn to Long Island it was cheaper to run my tank (rent aside). My electric bill is about the same, but it's for an entire house rather than a teensy tiny 1 bedroom apartment. When it's in the high 70s-low 80s out here I can run the fan on my AC and leave the windows open and the temp stays around 80*F. In Brooklyn I would have had to have had the AC on full blast and also run a fan on the tank if the outside temp was higher than 85*F (and this was last summer when we had all of those record breaking heat days...so I was doing this almost everyday. Before I got the living room AC the ambient temperature IN THE ROOM was well over 95*F since my loft was on the top floor with floor to ceiling windows that got full sun all day :cry: )

On a side note, the BlueZoo aquatics clip on fans work wonders on smaller tanks. Using that alone (before installing the AC) I was able to maintain a steady 83*F, which isn't great, but it's better than the 97*F heat spike I had just running a clip on fan from Target.

 

[fish&corals]

i know in my system the temp ranges from 77.4 to 81.3 most days pending on how hot it is out , but when i put my hand in the tank it does not seem that hot .. i live on the cent coast of florida .. we do have those hot days but seem to cool off when we get the trade winds off the ocean .. but not like up north has been getting this summer i have 2 fans on my tank .. one blowing across the top of the tank and one blowing across my ballast both are 4" .. i do a lot of diving at the beach i surf at cause thats all i pretty much surf are reef breaks here .. i know the water temps there are up around 84 if not higher and the fish and corals on the reef are looking good .. went out yesterday for a lil peak and see how it was doing .. i found some really cool purple acro growing .. im going to take a water cam with me next time and snap a few shots .. water was a lil murky yesterday when i went so i might just have to wait for it to be flat flat there was like a knee high wave across the reef yesterday ..

i was born in long island new york and know how hot it can get there during the summer months .. i thought about building a chiller for my tank but then again now that i read what molly cule posted it seems like my tank does not get that hot after all ..

 

[Murfman]

Article that I found a few years ago; Aquarium Frontiers On-Line: November 1997: Feature

 

[fsu1dolfan]

Agreed, though I'm wondering if tanks in warmer climates don't have as many issues around those temps since they probably sustain higher temperatures over longer periods of time than we do up here. I noticed that even moving from Brooklyn to Long Island it was cheaper to run my tank (rent aside). My electric bill is about the same, but it's for an entire house rather than a teensy tiny 1 bedroom apartment. When it's in the high 70s-low 80s out here I can run the fan on my AC and leave the windows open and the temp stays around 80*F. In Brooklyn I would have had to have had the AC on full blast and also run a fan on the tank if the outside temp was higher than 85*F (and this was last summer when we had all of those record breaking heat days...so I was doing this almost everyday. Before I got the living room AC the ambient temperature IN THE ROOM was well over 95*F since my loft was on the top floor with floor to ceiling windows that got full sun all day :cry: )

On a side note, the BlueZoo aquatics clip on fans work wonders on smaller tanks. Using that alone (before installing the AC) I was able to maintain a steady 83*F, which isn't great, but it's better than the 97*F heat spike I had just running a clip on fan from Target.

I agree i have a clip on fan and it has been great for me. I live in South Florida and temps can get quite hot outside here. My tank maintains a constant 78-80. My fan comes on around 12noon and my lights come on around 3pm. Lights out and fan off 30 mins later. My house is set at 78 during the day...as long as my AC is working lol. I had a scary moment when it died a couple of weeks ago and my tank was approaching 85...i was as stressed as the tank. I think the biggest thing are flucuations. I know some people that run their tank 75-76 and other that run 82-82 and things are great....large drops or increases are where the problems occur.

 

[Molly Cule]

Thanks for the link, murphman. A lot of people don't consider the regional temperatures of where they get their fish.

 

[jaytizzle]

It's all relative but I do believe that conditioning your tank to take more drastic temperature levels is a good thing if you can do it. I have a 24g at my office that had a 150W MH +36W T5 actinics on it and it would run from 78F to 88F every day. We got hit by a hurricane a couple of years ago (I live in South Louisiana) and the office was out of power for 3 days. The tank had minimal circulation (Koralia 2 on batter backup) and reached temps of 93F. I only lost one of my two clownfish. All of my mushrooms, hammer coral, frogspawn, zoas, and SPS survived with no lights and very high temps.

Now, I have LEDs on the tank and the temp barely breaks 79F in the middle of summer. I honestly don't think it would fare nearly as well given another hurrican episode like it went through.

 

[Molly Cule]

I have a 24g at my office that had a 150W MH +36W T5 actinics on it and it would run from 78F to 88F every day.

A 10*F fluctuation in 24 hours is a real lot though...I'd be very worried about the long term effects.

 

[jaytizzle]

I thought about it but it ran that way for almost 2 years and I got phenomenal growth (about 1" per month). This is all on a 24g aquapod with no skimmer, no heater, no chiller, no external filtration of any kind, etc. Basically, it was a tank of water with live rock and I do a water change about every 6 months. Long term effects were great, quite honestly. I swapped to LEDs and my growth has stayed about the same, my colors shifted a bit to some interesting shades, and everything is still humming along after over a year on LEDs.

 

[Molly Cule]

I thought about it but it ran that way for almost 2 years and I got phenomenal growth (about 1" per month). This is all on a 24g aquapod with no skimmer, no heater, no chiller, no external filtration of any kind, etc. Basically, it was a tank of water with live rock and I do a water change about every 6 months. Long term effects were great, quite honestly. I swapped to LEDs and my growth has stayed about the same, my colors shifted a bit to some interesting shades, and everything is still humming along after over a year on LEDs.

that's very interesting. do you have anything else running to keep the water from becoming stagnant aside from the return?

 

[jaytizzle]

Just a MJ-1200 for return pump and a Koralia 2 for circulation. It's a very minimal system. My avatar is a top-down shot of the tank from several months back. I top off manually with DI water as well.

 

[Reef Breeders Verified Sponsor]

I usually dont like my temp to fluctuate more than .1 degrees. Iam a little more lenient now as my corals seem to be doing fine with a 1-2 degree change day to night.

 

[jaytizzle]

That's just what I'm getting at, though. If you can condition your corals to withstand more radical conditions and get good growth and coloration out of them, why not do so? A very tight control range will make for very drastic problems when an upset condition occurs. I am convinced that my temp was able to withstand 90+F temps because it was running up to 88F on a daily basis with no apparent detrimental effects. If this same tank was kept at a steady 78-80F temp range, everything would have been nuked when the temp was peaking in the 90+F range. I live in a part of the country where hurricanes are a real possibility every year and this tank is not in a place where I can manage temp issues like I can on my tank at home. Is it the best scenario for others to run? Probably not... I also don't believe that very tight control conditions are the best scenario either, though. Just my $0.02 and some food for thought.

 

[Reef Breeders Verified Sponsor]

One thing I noticed is that my tank is stable within .1 degrees with ac, but pH is usually a little lower due to c02. Interesting trade off, temp for pH.

 

[Molly Cule]

I think a 10 degree fluctuation throughout the day is more than what most people would be comfortable with. On the flip side, would you let your temp dip down into the 60s if you lived somewhere where it gets colder? I'm not saying you're wrong by any means, it's just very extreme. I try to maintain < 4*F of deviation within a given day (ideally, < 2*F, but things happen). Even maintaining a tight range, I think there are a variety of corals that can handle some pretty substantial temperature spikes (zoas, for example). In Fiji there's acros that stay exposed for hours during low tide/high sun, so obviously there's a great deal of resilience in the wild.