Lighting cycle, water temperature, power outages and aeration

Morning all,

I have few questions this morning:

1. How long to you keep your aquarium lights on during the day? I have a full spectrum light which is apparently good for plants. I switch it on in the morning when I wake up and switch it off when I get home or when the sun has pretty much set. I'm trying to imitate a day/night cycle. Is this correct?
2. What do you do during a really hot week when your water temperature is getting too hot? Cape Town has been very hot lately and I have often come home to find my water temp just under or even slightly over 30 degrees Celsius (if the thermometer reading is accurate). I know you can buy chillers but they seem to be hellishly expensive. Is there a poor mans hack for this?
3. Power outages.....sigh....What do you do when you're sitting at work and you find out your power is off at home due to a blown transformer in your hood, and it will take a day to replace. Other than hooking all your equipment up to an UPS, what else can I do.
4. Aeration....In my tank (http://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/showthread.php?26015-Howzit!-Newbie-here), how important is it to have an air stone running 24/7? I know this isn't the only way to get oxygen into your water, but my noob paranoia forces me to to make sure I always have bubbles going, even if it's just a little bit.

Sorry that was a lot, but thank you!

 

1. 8-12 hours is OK
2. best is to have an open top tank, make sure your fish don't go carpet surfing, have a fan blow across the surface, keep lights off if they contribute to heat build-up, add air stones, encourage evaporation. You should get your temp down to around 27 doing this. Some add bottles with frozen water. Chillers are very expensive and primarily used on sw systems.
3. there are battery powered air pumps that keep the water moving, UPS/ inverter is your best route, alternatively solar is an expensive option.
4. airstones are good, especially to cool tanks down, but its not the only means to add O2. surface agitation is what causes gas exchange in water, so wave makers, power heads, flow pumps, spray bars etc pointed at the surface will all add oxygen

 

Sorry dont mean to hijack Inky but would wavemakers be advisable to cause surface agitation even in planted tanks JWH?

 

The short poor man's hack is to put a fan on it blowing directly on the water. This forces water to evaporate which in turn cools it down. Unfortunately for you this works better in low-humidity areas so YMMV. I also run my lights mostly at night since the ambient temp. will have dropped a bit and the heat from the lights won't be adding fuel to a fire.

I'm currently working on a custom circuit for myself that will turn a small PC fan on and off based on the water temp.

 

Which makes me wonder... In days of yore on the computer customisation scene "Bong Coolers" were all the rage for dirt-cheap water cooling. I can't seem to find them ever having been used in an aquarium setup. I wonder why? If proper cooling is really that expensive, this would be a good alternative I think.

My immediate thoughts are with a spot of careful filtration and GOOD temperature monitoring this could work. Maybe even go all the way and cool the tank water with secondary water cooled in the bong via simple heat exchange... to prevent yuckyness invading the bong system.

You could argue it's overboard but it'd be kickass effective.

 

A bit of a catch 22 situation.
Surface agitation will increase the O2 in your tank but also get rid of the CO2 which you may be pumping into your tank to make your plants grow.
On the other hand, most plants prefer cooler temps, so when you approach 30 (or over), forget about the CO2 loss, your plants aren't happy and so are your fish, ...switch on these fans blowing over the water surface or add frozen 2l plastic bottles.
I also heard of people making ice cubes from dechlor water they then just chuck into the tank when it gets too hot.

 

+1 @jcl