Over heating tanks.

What do you guys and girls do with overheating tanks in the summer?? Our house on a good summers day is hot and as such my tanks gets hotter than normal. My 700lt at the moment does not even have a heater in it and it is running a good 26 these days.

 

Same problem here... Had to install an aircon in my office - tank was going up to 28 degrees some days, and it's not even that hot yet...

 

On my 700lt I have made a kind of water run over with a ungravel filter plat to try and cool the water a bit. This is now the water comming from the pump to tank.

 

Got my 1000 tank with back painted black against a window to try help in winter but I remember lasts summer tank went up to 32 one day

 

Open the tank if you can and put a fan on top to blow over the water. Evaporation will cool the tank down.

 

i use a powerhead point up to the water surface also drops temp a bit
i also increase my airration to help if the temp goes threw the roof, in my case higher temp more agro so need to keep it down

 

i freeze tank water and make ice cubes that i throw in from time to time. i also used to freeze a 2L bottle of water and put the whole bottle in by the outflow so the cold plastic cools water around it.

 

Our ambient temperature in the house is around 29 deg c. We dont have insulation in the roof though. I have arranged for a company to come install a foam/spray type insulation in on Friday morning. They claim that it can lower the ambient temp by as much as 4 to 6 degrees. I also have thermal block out on my curtains to prevent too much heat absorption from the sun. I really cant afford another appliance running since my electricity bill is already too much. My tank shot up to 30 deg a couple of times now. Also tried the ice cube thing as a temporary solution. Not really successful. Will share the results over the weekend.

 

Surely, in nature the water tempratures will fluxuate as well? Temp changes between night & day will be quite a bit I would think - especially high up in the mountain rivers and so on.

Fish aren't THAT sensitive to tempratures? I mean, some run their aquariums at 21, other's at 26, others as high as 30. The fish are happy, and survive? Isn't this just making a "berg uit n molshoop?" A 5 or so degree change in temp for a couple of hours on a hot day, surely won't kill your fish... Sure, they will become less active, but die? Due to a couple of degrees change in temprature?

I guess it boils down to know your fish. They will be fine in a 'range' of tempratures and will be fine in tempratures out of that range for a few hours as well. But I highly doubt a fish will just plain die, due to water that's a couple of degrees over the "norm" for 8 (odd) hours a day.

 

Temperature fluctuation is fine in nature, because it happens much slower because of the huge volume of water. In a tank the fluctuation happens way to quickly and can cause damage to your fish.