Cooling Tips for Beating the Summer Heat
If you are unable to resolve a saltwater aquarium overheating issue because it is merely due to sweltering summer weather conditions, here are some simple but effective things you can do to help temporarily combat this problem and bring the tank temperature down. - To start with, DON'T ever just dump cold water directly into a saltwater aquarium. This can be too much of an abrupt temperature change and may cause shock to the marine inhabitants. What you can do is take some cleaned two liter plastic soda bottles and fill them with water, cap them and put them in your freezer. Once frozen, take them out and float them in your tank. After the water has melted in the bottles you can put them back in the freezer and re-use them. You might want to keep extras in the freezer so when the ones in your tank thaw out you can replace them with new frozen ones. This gives you a nice steady supply for rotating the bottles. Depending on the size of your tank and how bad your over heating problem is, you can use as many bottles as you feel are necessary, and of course monitor the thermostat.
- Cut back your lighting hours, especially if you have metal halides. Run your lighting as little as possible, enough to give the animals like corals some light, until things level out again.
- Tanks that have solid covers or close fitted hoods on top of them trap heat, and are prime candidates for poor aeration that results in stagnant air, low oxygen levels, and high levels of carbon dioxide.
- Do you have your hood vented? It is amazing how much heat is retained if it is not being vented. You can either raise your hood up to let some of the heat get out, remove it all together until things get back to normal, or cut and drill holes in your hood and install a few small fans for ventilation. Radio Shack has some great little four or five inch fans that work great for this purpose, or visit any home improvement center to see what you can find. If you raise up or remove a hood or cover on top of the tank, it is wise to cover the top of the tank with egg crate material to prevent your fish from jumping out. This can be found at any lighting, as well as any home improvement store.
- Does your tank have a solid cover on it, such as glass? Replace it with egg crate material.
- Hook up a fan next to the top of your tank or sump and blow air directly across the water, keeping in mind if you have to raise up or remove a hood or cover, do the same as above with the egg crate material.
- You can make an emergency chiller. You'll need an ice chest, ice, a pump, and some plastic tubing (enough to form a coil in the ice chest and reach to and from the aquarium or sump). Coil the tubing up and place it inside the ice chest, leaving enough on the ends to hook one end up to your pump that is placed in your sump or tank, and the other end to flow water back into your tank or sump. Fill the cooler with ice. Basically what you are doing is pumping water from your tank or sump through the coiled tubing in the ice and them pumping the cooled water back into your tank. With this method you will see a gradual change in the tank water temperature, just keep an eye on your thermometer and turn the pump off or on when needed to make adjustments.
- Make and install your own do-it-yourself chiller.
Are you having trouble the opposite problem, cold winter weather conditions and your tank's temperature is dropping? Refer to the How To Retain and Generate Heat sections in our "Being Prepared for a Power Outage" article. |
