rainydave
Chimp in Space......
I had to deploy the frozen water bottles the last couple of days. It helped a bit, but the tank temp still stayed north of 80. Thankfully, we're due for cooler weather.
Summer is here, lets talk heat control
- Thread starter Ichthys
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Ichthys
Well-known member
chiller for a buck
OK I have AC in the room with the main tank, however I have a 11 gallon nano in my study with no AC in that room. Last 2 days have been very hot. Here is what i did and it worked like a charm.
Small lunch cooler, small pump, the type that is used with a reactor, 25 feet of airline tubing, ice.
Hooked the tubing up to the small pump and placed it in the sump. The tubing ran put of sump and into the cooler full of ice where it was coiled a dozen times before heading back to sump. This dropped the nano from 80.5 to 78.7 in an hour and then i unplugged pump, anytime it got above 80 i plugged it back in and it dropped it right away. I swear this worked like a dream, no issues at all.
Ichy
OK I have AC in the room with the main tank, however I have a 11 gallon nano in my study with no AC in that room. Last 2 days have been very hot. Here is what i did and it worked like a charm.
Small lunch cooler, small pump, the type that is used with a reactor, 25 feet of airline tubing, ice.
Hooked the tubing up to the small pump and placed it in the sump. The tubing ran put of sump and into the cooler full of ice where it was coiled a dozen times before heading back to sump. This dropped the nano from 80.5 to 78.7 in an hour and then i unplugged pump, anytime it got above 80 i plugged it back in and it dropped it right away. I swear this worked like a dream, no issues at all.
Ichy
This weekend kicked my ass. Recently bought a new house without AC....so it holds the hot air in GREAT. Saturday I was in Seattle watching Dark Knight Rises at the Imax and got home around 6pm, to a tank at 86 degrees!
I topped off the sump with about 3 gallons of cool (around 60-65) degree water from an airline and watched it drop over the next two hours to 82 and in the morning it was 78. I kept every curtain closed after letting all the windows stay open all night, closed up the windows when the sun started heating up outside and had every fan in the house going. Worked great till the family got home from the beach and opened every door in the house. By night time it was 90 in my house and 84 in my tank. I put a gallon zip log bag with ice in it to try and help it out, opened all the windows in the bottom floor, slept on the couch and checked it in the morning.....86 degrees. The sump was down considerably so I added top off water. Rinse and repeat till summer is over? :/
I topped off the sump with about 3 gallons of cool (around 60-65) degree water from an airline and watched it drop over the next two hours to 82 and in the morning it was 78. I kept every curtain closed after letting all the windows stay open all night, closed up the windows when the sun started heating up outside and had every fan in the house going. Worked great till the family got home from the beach and opened every door in the house. By night time it was 90 in my house and 84 in my tank. I put a gallon zip log bag with ice in it to try and help it out, opened all the windows in the bottom floor, slept on the couch and checked it in the morning.....86 degrees. The sump was down considerably so I added top off water. Rinse and repeat till summer is over? :/
krisfal
Well-known member
What kind of lighting are you running? When I was running MH lighting I had my controller set up to turn off the lights if the tank temp hit 84 (in our area of the country it is rare that we have a heat wave long enough that lack of light will be an issue). A fan blowing accross the water of the tank and or sump will also help. Yesterday I had my first heat issues with my tank since I switched to LED (someone had turned off the AC in the room overnight . . . so I did not get as much cooling as normal) so I shut down one of my 2 hammerhead pumps and added a temporary powerhead, that stabilized the temp at 84.4 for the day (peaked at about 11:00 am). Some of our equipment adds a lot of heat to the tank, and turning it off temporarily during an exceptionally hot day can make a difference.
Strong fan blowing directly across the surface of your tank will provide a ton of cooling. My goal has been to run my tank all summer without using my chiller, but it kicked on for an hour on Sunday ruining my streak. Still though, it didn't kick on till the room was over 90(with 500w of mh running). The one problem with this strategy is that it doesn't work if you want to keep all the windows closed because it puts a _lot_ of humidity in your air.
The second option is to just not run your lights if it is going to be really hot. A day or two without lights is no big deal for our tanks.
The second option is to just not run your lights if it is going to be really hot. A day or two without lights is no big deal for our tanks.
NC2WA
Well-known member
this is what a house is design to do (fortunately/unfortunately), depending on your perspective.
keeping gatorade bottles full of RO water in a freezer is a quick way to add them to your sump...when they have melted, just put back to freezer to recycle.
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pandora32
Well-known member
I know high heat (like mine at 86) isnt good. But for the newbies out there, somenody want to shed some light on the bads for the livestock as well as the parameters.
I use 6 54 W T5's which I thought were one of the cooler running options but these are kicking out some serious heat. The really high temps are gone and we honestly only have a month of it left before we start ramping down for fall. I'll definetly get a couple bottles frozen to help out and may look at going with the airline chiller option posted here next summer. I have a coral life MH hood I was hoping to retrofit with 4 of the T5's but with the heat issues I have had this year I don't know that it is a really good idea. There's just not enough ventilation. Do you think my wife would divorce me if I installed a fan from the closet to the office? :eyebrows:
Ichthys
Well-known member
#1 reefing question...
Welcome to reefing, I believe 70-90% of all reefing questions begin with the phrase, will my wife divorce me if... lol for those of us lucky enough to have a wife who is also enamored with the hobby, we are lucky guys. even still, I have crossed the line more than a few times and brought down the wrath of wife lol.
Wife: you want to cut a whole WHERE? and put a WHAT SIZE tank in the bedroom??? Me: uhmm nevermind honey....
Welcome to reefing, I believe 70-90% of all reefing questions begin with the phrase, will my wife divorce me if... lol for those of us lucky enough to have a wife who is also enamored with the hobby, we are lucky guys. even still, I have crossed the line more than a few times and brought down the wrath of wife lol.
Wife: you want to cut a whole WHERE? and put a WHAT SIZE tank in the bedroom??? Me: uhmm nevermind honey....
Norahs_dad
Well-known member
FYI 8-16 and 8-17 Thursday and Friday high tem 91-93
pandora32
Well-known member
Plenty of frozen water bottles and milk jugs for me then.
Peppie
Well-known member
Sounds like a conversation in my house not to long ago. LOL
Heres the kicker I have been a carpenter my whole life!!! (What do you mean I cant put it back the way it was!!?? )
We will have to compare notes when we meet in a couple of weeks.
Now for the thread title.
I installed the air conditioners in the house a few days ago. The AIO DT in side is good to go. Bring on the heat!
As for the Frag Tank in the garage I have switched the light cycle to the middle of the night, and have some freeze packs in ziplock at the ready.
Norahs_dad
Well-known member
Yeah this after noon I put my hydors on timers so 3 will be on then the other 3 to keep the heat down and because I don't have a wave maker that does it for me. That should help, also put a fan blowing across tank that comes on when the first light timer gos off
We have one of the ac on wheels I will move in there before we leave for the day too, right now it's chilling down the bedroom and I'm not giving it up for the night.
We have one of the ac on wheels I will move in there before we leave for the day too, right now it's chilling down the bedroom and I'm not giving it up for the night.
NC2WA
Well-known member
i have a 12,000 BTU air conditioner in the window and it cools the downstairs to a comfortable 71-73 degrees...I like it colder myself, but eh not going to complain...fortunately, my tank is in the garage which is in the coolest part of the house AND I have an attic fan that sucks the cool air from the crawl space into the garage and hot air out...my tank temp today was 81..
I put an AC unit upstairs and it has a downdraft cooling effect on my entryway which, just to the right, is the room with the tank hidden in the closet. I also reduced the photoperiod to about 6 hours. Corals and anemone seems plenty happy, no change and the temp seems to be staying 76.
rainydave
Chimp in Space......
Looks like I might be deploying my "frozen water bottles in the sump" cooling solution this weekend. Tank is already up to 80 today.
NC2WA
Well-known member
My tank is 81.4 with a fan running (thanks RKE), however the attic fan that is in the garage is not on yet...once it kicks on, cold air from the crawl space is sucked into the garage..i have not seen the tank higher than 83 (and this is when we had 100 degree weather a couple yrs ago)..
Coralczy
Well-known member
I run two ac units and don't heat my water when doing water changes. Been doing it for years and never lost anything due to the weather. I also run MH over my display.
Peppie
Well-known member
Just finished installing two window air cond. and one free standing unit in the house today.
I'm ready!
Garage frag tank is at 78. No lights, and one pump. I will keep an eye on it. Just has 4 damsels in it.
I'm ready!
Garage frag tank is at 78. No lights, and one pump. I will keep an eye on it. Just has 4 damsels in it.
So is it weird that during a heat wave I worry more about my tropical setups than my Coldwater tanks? Lol. My lobster tank stays cool. But the chiller is running alot. My 8 gallon Coldwater did reached 74 today. But that's not deadly so tomorrow I will be running it down stairs in the basement where it should stay cool enough. Or in an emergency run a flow through system so it doesn't crash. My carpet nems enjoy temps in the 80's so having a box fan blowing over the tanks seemed to work today. But when temps really rise I may be putting cold packs in the sump along with frozen water bottles. And btw my 20 gallon Coldwater tank downstairs crashed from the heat. I had clams in it and they died and tried taking everything with it. So I'm not sure what will make it yet.
