Help Please

ArowanaLover1902 · Feb 4, 2016

I just had a major and unexplained spike in temperature, 85 degrees farenheit. Will this kill anything? What caused it as well, the lighting seemed a bit hot, its the standard lighting on a biocube 14 (coralife). As soon as i noticed i unplugged the heater, turned off the lights, and added 4 ice cubes. The temp has yet to go down. The clownfish seems unaffected, the firefish is hiding, and the soft corals have all retreated into themselves. I feel horrible for not noticing sooner, but i know i caught it within at the most 3 hours, but i would guess it had happened for around 2 hours. I didn't change the heater and i had run the lights for only 16 straight hours (I know that is a bad lighting cycle, i just left them on a bit longer today, my normal time is 10 hours). I really hope everything recovers, i will post tomorrow on any deaths and other effects. What could have caused this?

ArowanaLover1902 · Feb 4, 2016

Added a bag of ice cubes so that the bad quality of the well water ice cubes does not mess up water, temp down to 83. I think the fish will be fine, and the feather duster seems only a bit subdued. I don't have any experience with corals though.

cameronh · Feb 4, 2016

They should be fine man. Check your fans on the biocube to make sure they are working properly. The biocubes do get warm from time to time. What's the temperature in your house? Depending on that, you shouldn't have to run a heater if your house stays at a steady temp that coincides with your tank and inhabitants, you should be alright. But check the fans first. I had the same problem with my old biocube

cameronh · Feb 4, 2016

Hope this helps

cmcoker · Feb 4, 2016

Open the entire hood, if this happens again, and blow a fan across it. Elevated temp is the reason I put leds in my biocube. Would easily hit 84 in the summer. You can also store a plastic water bottle, partially filled, in the freezer in case you need it.

Brian Kim · Feb 5, 2016

Yep, I used to have a jbj 24&28, like cameronh said, check the fan and also the heater...I had one of my heaters stay on past the set temperature and my tank water went up to 85 once. Luckly, everything survived

mcarroll · Feb 5, 2016

Don't freak out!

I wouldn't do anything else other than:

shut off the heater
set a reminder on your phone to turn it back on at some point
open the tank lid for a while.

85ºF is not "that hot"....some reefs in the ocean have a normal daytime temp of around 86ºF.

Figure out the cause and things should get back to normal with no further ado!

(Assuming a little bit that the temp is the only thing wrong.)

mcarroll · Feb 5, 2016

Just on a nerdy footnote....I remembered after posting that I was told that 85ºF factoid, didn't know much background except that it was a reference to Palau.

So I looked it up and on a quick search found some more interesting info here:
http://www.coralreefresearchfoundation.org/CRRFassets/Reports/CRRFTechRep1h.pdf
In particular, see graphs in Figure 2 and 3 on page 4.

To save you having to convert ºC to ºF, Palau reefs see peak temperatures from the mid-80ºF's almost up to almost 90ºF!! Wow!

They are having bleaching events, so that is not a healthy range, but I don't think 85ºF is in the harmful range for your tank...especially if it's just a short term thing like this.

ArowanaLover1902 · Feb 5, 2016

I think I found the culprit, it's a very unsuspecting criminal, I could be wrong though. My suspicion is that the protein skimmer is doing it. The temp went down to 79.0 and wouldn't move. the lights were off all night and temp didn't go down, so it's the skimmer, the pump, or the UV. Not sure yet. I unplugged the skimmer though, maybe I had it turned up too high.