I need tips to cool the water

[lion king]

I’d think it would be pretty much impossible to get your water temperature lower than your room temperature without a chiller.

One room gets to 84 degrees, a 40B with an iceprobe chiller and a small clip on fan, I keep it at a steady 76 degrees. The tanks with fans only I get a solid 4 degrees drop from ambient temp. I do live in the desert, which means usually my humidity is low, so with fans and evap I can get a good drop. If you live in higher humidity, you will not get a good drop.

BTW, most tanks are fine even up to 80 degrees or more. You can read some studies that promote warmer tanks. Its more about temperature swings, you don't want your tank going from 76 to 80. I gradually change my temp controller as seasons change, because some rooms in my house goes from 60 in the winter to 85 in the summer.

With ambient temp of 77, that small fan, the inkbird, and an ato; you'll easily keep that tank within range. Screen top right, during the warmer months my tanks go from glass to screen.

 

[HB AL]

Nothing should be " cooking " at the temps you mention. Are you using a calibrated thermometer? If things are actually dying from high temps then your water temp must be alot higher than what you said. In your case to get your tank water down to 76 then you have 3 options,
1- constantly add replace frozen water bottles keeping your temp in your desired range, but that's a pain in the butt and you cant do it if your not home.

2- if you dont have it get some AC for that room to bring the temp down to your desired number.

3- get a chiller.

That's about all you can do if you have to have the temp at 76 with everything in the tank running and the ambient room temp of 77. My tank fluctuates between 78.6 and 80.4 and nothing is ever close to (cooking ) throughout a 24 hour cycle, Its in the warmest room (bedroom) in my house so I have fans blowing over the top and I also have central air to keep it within my desired range and myself comfortable.

 

[Reef Outfit]

One room gets to 84 degrees, a 40B with an iceprobe chiller and a small clip on fan, I keep it at a steady 76 degrees. The tanks with fans only I get a solid 4 degrees drop from ambient temp. I do live in the desert, which means usually my humidity is low, so with fans and evap I can get a good drop. If you live in higher humidity, you will not get a good drop.

BTW, most tanks are fine even up to 80 degrees or more. You can read some studies that promote warmer tanks. Its more about temperature swings, you don't want your tank going from 76 to 80. I gradually change my temp controller as seasons change, because some rooms in my house goes from 60 in the winter to 85 in the summer.

With ambient temp of 77, that small fan, the inkbird, and an ato; you'll easily keep that tank within range. Screen top right, during the warmer months my tanks go from glass to screen.

Dudes, I love y'all but there's no way I'm gonna drill a hole in my tank at this point, that ship has sailed a long time ago. This is the perfect time to say "If I knew this back then..."

It seems like a coolant fluid, a heat dissipator and a PC fan. Its like what goes on top of a processor. Maybe I should install a gaming PC water cooled system in my tank!

I'll definitely put a cooler in next time.

Anyway, I'll go with the fan for now, its pretty much the same thing except for the humongous evaporation. Then I will have to add an ATO...I try to keep things simple but one thing leads to another, its amazing. Pretty soon I won't be able to see or get close to my tank with so much crap hanging everywhere. I dont have a sump underneath, so everything happens around the tank.

Definitely a must to begin in the hobby with a small tank to minimize money loss just due to the scale of things, but it definitely feels like its too much for too little. Wouldn't actually never mean too little as I absolutely love everything about it but boy do I wish I had a larger more stable system with more to offer.

 

[Reef Outfit]

Nothing should be " cooking " at the temps you mention. Are you using a calibrated thermometer? If things are actually dying from high temps then your water temp must be alot higher than what you said. In your case to get your tank water down to 76 then you have 3 options,
1- constantly add replace frozen water bottles keeping your temp in your desired range, but that's a pain in the butt and you cant do it if your not home.

2- if you dont have it get some AC for that room to bring the temp down to your desired number.

3- get a chiller.

That's about all you can do if you have to have the temp at 76 with everything in the tank running and the ambient room temp of 77. My tank fluctuates between 78.6 and 80.4 and nothing is ever close to (cooking ) throughout a 24 hour cycle, Its in the warmest room (bedroom) in my house so I have fans blowing over the top and I also have central air to keep it within my desired range and myself comfortable.

I actually have no idea if one thing is related to the other, thank you for straightening that out. I figured the shrimp cooked because my temperature hit an all time high for me today at 81.7º and the shrimps' flesh which is usually transparent turned white and he kaput at the same time.

Can you tell me what happened to him though? I just figured that invertebrates are more sensible than fish and perhaps the other guys were in bad shape too but I cant spot them.

I have an AC in the room, but keeping it on 24 hours just for this tiny tank is going to be too expensive, although its a solid solution. I only need to bring it down couple degrees, I'll try the fan first and we'll see. Its paramount I also keep it stable.

Definitely the room temperature is too high too be operating such a small system full of equipment without raising the water temperature significantly, unless you take chilling measures it'll always be over room temp. Perhaps if the room temp was around 70º it would compensate. Its actually 68º outside here in Los Angeles but I must keep things shut due to just an incredible amount of dust that comes into the house, my balcony is on a very busy 8 lane two way blvd (Not the freeway thank god!) so its always warmer inside.

Thank you.

Drama queen:

 

[IamChrismWard]

I made a cheap DIY Chiller about 20 years back, I used one of the little dorm fridges had a small fountain pump with about 50 foot of flexible hose in it that ran out of the sump into a hole I drilled in the side of the fridge with most of the hose coiled inside there and then back into the sump. I had maybe fifty bucks in the whole thing.

 

[Reef Outfit]

Curiosity: I had just posted a video today of my barnacle Blenny where you can see the Pederson shrimp already white but looking fine. That was at 3:38pm, he died around 6pm.

 

[Shawn_epicurious]

Dudes, I love y'all but there's no way I'm gonna drill a hole in my tank at this point, that ship has sailed a long time ago. This is the perfect time to say "If I knew this back then..."

It seems like a coolant fluid, a heat dissipator and a PC fan. Its like what goes on top of a processor. Maybe I should install a gaming PC water cooled system in my tank!

I'll definitely put a cooler in next time.

Anyway, I'll go with the fan for now, its pretty much the same thing except for the humongous evaporation. Then I will have to add an ATO...I try to keep things simple but one thing leads to another, its amazing. Pretty soon I won't be able to see or get close to my tank with so much crap hanging everywhere. I dont have a sump underneath, so everything happens around the tank.

Definitely a must to begin in the hobby with a small tank to minimize money loss just due to the scale of things, but it definitely feels like its too much for too little. Wouldn't actually never mean too little as I absolutely love everything about it but boy do I wish I had a larger more stable system with more to offer.

I can hear the frustration in your writing... you have to remember that what you are doing is very difficult... you are trying to maintain a very specific water chemistry/temperature in a very small tank. It just doesn’t take much to create big swings in such a small ecology. I honestly don’t know how you guys do it. I went from a 75 gallon tank to a 200 gallon tank to get away from those things. ...there is room to make a small mistake with 200 gallons.

if it was me, I’d just lower the ambient temperature in the room... I get it, that gets expensive : ( although, it may be cheaper than buying more equipment. I dunno. I keep the temp in my tank room at 71 and my water never gets above 79. My Apex keeps it between 77.5 and 78.5. My heater almost never kicks on.

 

[HB AL]

I actually have no idea if one thing is related to the other, thank you for straightening that out. I figured the shrimp cooked because my temperature hit an all time high for me today at 81.7º and the shrimps' flesh which is usually transparent turned white and he kaput at the same time.

Can you tell me what happened to him though? I just figured that invertebrates are more sensible than fish and perhaps the other guys were in bad shape too but I cant spot them.

I have an AC in the room, but keeping it on 24 hours just for this tiny tank is going to be too expensive, although its a solid solution. I only need to bring it down couple degrees, I'll try the fan first and we'll see. Its paramount I also keep it stable.

Definitely the room temperature is too high too be operating such a small system full of equipment without raising the water temperature significantly, unless you take chilling measures it'll always be over room temp. Perhaps if the room temp was around 70º it would compensate. Its actually 68º outside here in Los Angeles but I must keep things shut due to just an incredible amount of dust that comes into the house, my balcony is on a very busy 8 lane two way blvd (Not the freeway thank god!) so its always warmer inside.

Thank you.

Drama queen:

That temp gauge you are using is notorious for being off several degrees, for no reason when it was fine the previous year, I had the same one multiple times. I bought a cheap digital thermometer probe that you can calibrate and that's how I found out mine was reading high by over 2 degrees. Find a cheap thermometer online that you can calibrate and take the temp with that to compare to your current one in the tank. I use an inkbird controller that I can calibrate to show the true temp. If it is accurate and the tank maxes out at 81.7 I wouldn't sweat it, that temp is not gonna kill anything. No idea what killed your shrimp, I'm not a shrimp expert but I woulda thrown it on a kabob then grilled it for dinner!

 

[Easy Reefing]

I use a fan and it’s connected to a Bayite temp controller . I have a fluval 13.5 . Here’s a little video I did on it .

Water Temperature Controller for my Reef Tank

 

[vetteguy53081]

With big tanks, i last year utilized 4 zip lock bags filled and frozen and added a bag to sump. When it thawed, i pulled it and placed in freezer and placed another frozen one in sump. I just made arrangements for purchase of a chiller unit

 

[Reef Outfit]

I can hear the frustration in your writing... you have to remember that what you are doing is very difficult... you are trying to maintain a very specific water chemistry/temperature in a very small tank. It just doesn’t take much to create big swings in such a small ecology. I honestly don’t know how you guys do it. I went from a 75 gallon tank to a 200 gallon tank to get away from those things. ...there is room to make a small mistake with 200 gallons.

if it was me, I’d just lower the ambient temperature in the room... I get it, that gets expensive : ( although, it may be cheaper than buying more equipment. I dunno. I keep the temp in my tank room at 71 and my water never gets above 79. My Apex keeps it between 77.5 and 78.5. My heater almost never kicks on.

I'm more of a tempura kind of guy...

Oh man, he was carrying eggs and all. I was going to try to hatch them.

Thanks for the consolation, I like to take on impossible challenges.

The tank is in my biggest room (living) and I only got a portable AC in there, that poor thing is gonna have to give it all it got to try to bring the temp down. The sun shines on the balcony glass doors and acts as a heater. At night temps drop.

One day I'll have the Neptunes...and a big butt tank! It'll probably be a breeze after wrestling with this sucker.

 

[Reef Outfit]

With big tanks, i last year utilized 4 zip lock bags filled and frozen and added a bag to sump. When it thawed, i pulled it and placed in freezer and placed another frozen one in sump. I just made arrangements for purchase of a chiller unit

That sounds like a great idea but a lot of work, unless they were big bags and took a very long time to thaw so you wouldn't have to change multiple times a day.

I dont have a sump so I had to put a gel pack directly in my tank. Pretty cumbersome and definitely not an option...

Good luck with the chiller! Where are you going to drill?

 

[HB AL]

Heat wave coming in the next few days, gonna be hot.

 

[Shawn_epicurious]

I'm more of a tempura kind of guy...

Oh man, he was carrying eggs and all. I was going to try to hatch them.

Thanks for the consolation, I like to take on impossible challenges.

The tank is in my biggest room (living) and I only got a portable AC in there, that poor thing is gonna have to give it all it got to try to bring the temp down. The sun shines on the balcony glass doors and acts as a heater. At night temps drop.

One day I'll have the Neptunes...and a big butt tank! It'll probably be a breeze after wrestling with this sucker.

Hang in there Bruh

ask yourself this.. a change in monthly electric bill and a new AC... or more tank equipment... choose the lesser of two evils.

 

[Reef Outfit]

I use a fan and it’s connected to a Bayite temp controller . I have a fluval 13.5 . Here’s a little video I did on it .

Water Temperature Controller for my Reef Tank

Hey, thats my tank! Its also a Fluval EVO 13.5.

Thats perfect, your setup is exactly what I have realized I must do.

I though water would stay equivalent to room temperature naturally, which here is more or less within the ideal range. I never considered the heat from the pumps motors though, which then would have made me consider a chilling method also rather than just a heater.

But its strange to me to see so many people having chillers and knowing so much about it, I knew they were available but didn't seem something so common and necessary. Even when I was doing my research before I got my tank I dont remember ever hearing of a chiller being a standard device for your initial setup.

 

[Reeffragger]

One question, is this an issue with larger tanks? Do larger tanks usually need chillers?

My 135g tank is in my bedroom. Its a 13x10 bedroom typical size for the regular bedrooms in a house. I also have a a 60g hex. 27g hex and 20g qt tank. I have 250g of water nearly in this room.. 3rd lvl of house. The room is always warmer with me in it. Specially if i close my door and even more so if my gaming pc is running.

My tank tonight was 82f. Heater is set to 79f. I lowered it down to 76-77. But i also have 6 T5s. And 2 36 inch 50w LED fixtures on the tank. I can feel the heat radiating from them. I alao have 95% of the tank covered to keep my fish from jumping. My ceiling fan is on full blast though.. that helps immensly.

But my tank at night drops to 78f or so.. during day its 82f. House thermostat is set to 68f.

So yes to answer your question a fish tank specially a large one or many of them like me can and will increase temps in that room.

Ive debated just unplugging my heater all together. But i noticed it does come on at night so ill leave it on because again my tank at night is 78f or so..

I dont want my tank to get to 76 or lower. Kinda want some consistancy. I dunno what live stock you have but at 82f even at 84. My 70+ mixed sps lps softies and 15 or so fish with two shrimps and anemones and a star fish ive had for over 1 1.2 years. They dont care about the temps one bit.

 

[Easy Reefing]

Hey, thats my tank! Its also a Fluval EVO 13.5.

Thats perfect, your setup is exactly what I have realized I must do.

I though water would stay equivalent to room temperature naturally, which here is more or less within the ideal range. I never considered the heat from the pumps motors though, which then would have made me consider a chilling method also rather than just a heater.

But its strange to me to see so many people having chillers and knowing so much about it, I knew they were available but didn't seem something so common and necessary. Even when I was doing my research before I got my tank I dont remember ever hearing of a chiller being a standard device for your initial setup.

Yea mine is always stable but I live in San Diego so weathers nice all year round . Never knew the motor would heat up my temp . Temp controller is good because it’ll shut off the heater if the temperature gets too high . An alarm will go off too if the temp is too low/high

 

[Reef Outfit]

Curiosity: I had just posted a video today of my barnacle Blenny where you can see the Pederson shrimp already white but looking fine. That was at 3:38pm, he died around 6pm.

I'm gonna quote myself...

I think the shrimp got knocked out by the barnacle Blenny kkkkkk

 

[Griev]

I’d think it would be pretty much impossible to get your water temperature lower than your room temperature without a chiller.

This is actually a common misconception. Thanks to the magic of evaporative cooling, it's possible to cool the tank 4-5 degrees below ambient temperature, and if your air is dry actually cool your room too! It's the same effect that makes swamp coolers work.

More info; http://spec-tanks.com/using-a-fan-to-cool-your-aquarium-does-it-work/

I 3D printed a dual PC fan mount for my tank and it can cool 50 gallons a full degree in about 10 minutes. Keeps it under 81 even in the summer.

 

[Reef Outfit]

Yea mine is always stable but I live in San Diego so weathers nice all year round . Never knew the motor would heat up my temp . Temp controller is good because it’ll shut off the heater if the temperature gets too high . An alarm will go off too if the temp is too low/high

Have you ever set your temp to 76º? I bet your fan would be on 50-50 and you would have to deal with evaporation.

I say that because I can get stable within 79º here, which is room temperature+motors (remember I got 4 motors in the water full-time + 2 powerheads I turn on occasionally when the temperature is a bit lower than usual and it allows for a little extra heat). So Im curious if you could keep it as low as 76.