I've been around for a while, but I thought I would post this in the beginner section in case someone else may be able to learn from my problems and what I've done to fix it.
If others have suggestions please feel free to post too.
Heat is a major problem for aquarium fish in the summer. For many people running the AC in the room with your aquarium will keep everything nice and regular. Other people (like myself) do not have AC in the fish room so the water gets hot.
Here in Maryland we're dealing with some pretty hot (and sticky) weather this week. My water temp has risen about 8 degrees in 2 days. Today it is 84 in my 50 gal (outside temp is about 98).
Knowing that the temp would be a problem the first thing I did was to turn off the lights. Except for the most delicate of plants, lights off in a planted aquarium will be fine for a week or two (the measures I'm listing are really only good for a short period. Just enough to get you over the hump and out of a heat wave). Unfortunately I did not take into account my canister filter, and why I have it. The canister creates very little surface agitation which allows CO2 to build up which the plants really like.
Fish do not like CO2. This is usually not a problem, but as the water temp goes up, the oxygen levels go down. Yesterday afternoon I found 2 flying fox and a yoyo loach dead. Cardinals hanging listless at the surface, and a gourami at the surface on his side.
I immediately knew the problem. Yes it was hot, but the fish had suffocated.
The first thing I did was to rotate my spray bar so that the water was arching over the water. This created a water fountain and began agitating the surface. Agitation means that CO2 will leak out of the water faster and that oxygen will enter it. Then I dumped a few handfuls of ice into the tank (along with some StressCoat). A few minutes later all of the fish were swimming again at their normal level of the column. Today they still looked healthy (except for the 3 I lost).
Ice Cubes aren't a great long term solution for cooling a tank down.
Instead I froze bottles of water. These are going to be added one at a time, and replace each other. If I add all of the frozen bottles then I risk a temperature flux which would be very bad to already weakened fish.
The other thing that I did was to uncover the tank (or open lids). Water will cool itself through evaporation. At the moment we're so humid that not much is evaporating, but it is still an important step.
Ultimately I think the most critical thing to do for a hot tank is to make sure that it has plenty of suface agitation. Whether this is from a bubbler, a rotated spray bar, or an HOB filter cascading into the water getting the CO2 out of the water when it's hot is vital.
Oh, and you'll obviously need to turn off CO2 injectors.
I hope that this helps some of you in the future. Like I said, this isn't a long term fix. Only AC or an aquarium chiller will provide that.
Jonathan
If others have suggestions please feel free to post too.
Heat is a major problem for aquarium fish in the summer. For many people running the AC in the room with your aquarium will keep everything nice and regular. Other people (like myself) do not have AC in the fish room so the water gets hot.
Here in Maryland we're dealing with some pretty hot (and sticky) weather this week. My water temp has risen about 8 degrees in 2 days. Today it is 84 in my 50 gal (outside temp is about 98).
Knowing that the temp would be a problem the first thing I did was to turn off the lights. Except for the most delicate of plants, lights off in a planted aquarium will be fine for a week or two (the measures I'm listing are really only good for a short period. Just enough to get you over the hump and out of a heat wave). Unfortunately I did not take into account my canister filter, and why I have it. The canister creates very little surface agitation which allows CO2 to build up which the plants really like.
Fish do not like CO2. This is usually not a problem, but as the water temp goes up, the oxygen levels go down. Yesterday afternoon I found 2 flying fox and a yoyo loach dead. Cardinals hanging listless at the surface, and a gourami at the surface on his side.
I immediately knew the problem. Yes it was hot, but the fish had suffocated.
The first thing I did was to rotate my spray bar so that the water was arching over the water. This created a water fountain and began agitating the surface. Agitation means that CO2 will leak out of the water faster and that oxygen will enter it. Then I dumped a few handfuls of ice into the tank (along with some StressCoat). A few minutes later all of the fish were swimming again at their normal level of the column. Today they still looked healthy (except for the 3 I lost).
Ice Cubes aren't a great long term solution for cooling a tank down.
Instead I froze bottles of water. These are going to be added one at a time, and replace each other. If I add all of the frozen bottles then I risk a temperature flux which would be very bad to already weakened fish.
The other thing that I did was to uncover the tank (or open lids). Water will cool itself through evaporation. At the moment we're so humid that not much is evaporating, but it is still an important step.
Ultimately I think the most critical thing to do for a hot tank is to make sure that it has plenty of suface agitation. Whether this is from a bubbler, a rotated spray bar, or an HOB filter cascading into the water getting the CO2 out of the water when it's hot is vital.
Oh, and you'll obviously need to turn off CO2 injectors.
I hope that this helps some of you in the future. Like I said, this isn't a long term fix. Only AC or an aquarium chiller will provide that.
Jonathan
