It's Hot!!! Keeping the fish cool?

For those of you up in Gauteng at the moment, how's this heat?! My poor nano tank hit 30°.

Had to make a plan to cool it a bit. Took a cup of water out and put it in the freezer. Put the frozen lump back in the tank. Took it down to 28°.


Then, a couple of hours later, back up to 30°. Repeat. Hope this passes soon, I don't think it's good for the little chaps to stay at 30° for very long...

How do you all deal with overheating? Short of getting a chiller, that's not really an option for this little tank on my desk...

 

Have a fan blow air over the tank, you will get better results if you remove the lid ( fish permitting of course )

 

Good idea. I'm pretty hot too, actually -- no AC, one of the drawbacks of working from home. The fan might be a good idea. I'm usually against evaporation (leaves white scale marks, makes water harder, etc.) so I like my little lid. But in this weather, I think some evaporation is the lesser of two evils.

 

I was going to create a thread on Sunday and ask the exact same thing. Time just got the better of me and I ended up making a plan with a usb desktop fan. Sitting on top of the tank today I had the temperature at 27degrees. The fan dropped it to 24 when I checked it at about 5pm.
I can deal with the white water marks as long as my fishy’s are happy


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I usually have this issue. My tap water comes out at between 35 and 40 so I have to do my water changes at like 5am. I usually drop an ice pack in the tank (melts in 5min) and I get the temp down to 32. Another about an hour later and gets the temp down to about 30. The ac is almost always on though so my tank stays between 28 and 30 usually. Thankfully I don't need a heater lol those things scare the hell out of me

 

Now with winter approaching so rapidly I'm curious to see what it is going to be like. The ice pack method seems to be working as no fish showed signs of stress, just hunger. However I do have a spare bathroom so I use the geyser water there. Thankfully I have switches in each bathroom and kitchen and a geyser in each of them, so the one in my spare bathroom stays off and is used once a week so the temperature isn't really as bad as it would be normally. Also the geyser is in the ceiling in my bathroom and i have a floor above me so this keeps the water in there alot cooler than if I were to be closer to the top

For those that didn't know, if you want to take a cold shower here that would be how you do it lol geyser water with the geyser off.

If I were to be using straight from the tap cold water it comes out much warmer. Closer to 40 and that's at like 5am. I've never attempted to do a water change in the afternoon to know what temps I'd get.

 

One of the big issues with high temps is that the oxygenation of the water drops. If you can, get an airstone going in there too along with a fan. That should keep your fish a lot happier

 

I wondered where you lived, but then saw your profile: UAE. Okay, so maybe Pretoria isn't actually the hottest place in the world, but it sure felt like it yesterday. Maybe I should consider keeping discus again...

 

Okay, so I've now hooked up a fan too. Not directly over the tank but sort of next to it and alongside. Hopefully will get the temp down a degree or two.

 

I don't have an airstone but there is surface agitation from the filter. I'll monitor it and if I see fish gasping or something, I'll need to make a plan. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Switch your lights off ... or reduce / move the light cycle ... nothing wrong with getting some airflow over the tank. The trick as always small changes - so a tank dropping from 30 degrees to 20 in a few minutes is probably not the best idea, but a gradual "natural" reduction over a few hours should be fine. ( Side note, some fish need the sharp drop to signal spawning time if memory serves)

Later Ferdie