Keeping Tanks Warm in unheated basement

Rachel.Cody · Feb 20, 2015

What is the best way to keep tanks to hold heat in an unheated basement. It's sort of heated on the other side of the basement but my heaters are almost always on. Ive lowered my lemps to about 78* when i usually keep them at about 82*. These heaters being on all the time is just racking up the bill. Two of them dont have tops but i have rigid insulation over the top so i guess that helps a little. Any help is appreciated. Its also a concrete floors but none of the tanks are on it. The 29g is close to sitting on it though..

Chaz88 · Feb 20, 2015

Put in some duct work to bring heat to that part of the basement. Or use a fan to at least help circulate from the other part. If you can put in duct work and close off and insulate the tank space that would be best.

Oddball · Feb 20, 2015

Insulate the basement or you'll be fighting the heat and utility bill until you give it up in frustration. I insulated the hell out of a 10,000 sq/ft hatchery holding 33K gals of tanks. Once the rooms and tanks reached 80F, the furnace rarely ever came on again. My utilities for heat averaged $90/month. Not bad for 10K sqft of space.

Oddball · Feb 20, 2015

My dad built tank racks and enclosed them in false walls (think 'fish closet'). The backs of the fish tanks were about 3ft from the wall allowing for a maintenance/feeding aisle. The front of the tank rack was walled/insulated in and an insulated interior door was placed on the framed out open end. A ceramic heater heated the back of the fish closet keeping the tanks at proper temp.

duanes · Feb 20, 2015

I have 2" styrofoam insulation panels taped on the back, bottom, and sides of any tanks that need to be heated.
You could have a panel for the front to be put on at the end of the day, if your really ambitious. I have a panel for the front, at the ready just in case of power outage.

FMA4ME · Feb 20, 2015

Oddball said:
My dad built tank racks and enclosed them in false walls (think 'fish closet'). The backs of the fish tanks were about 3ft from the wall allowing for a maintenance/feeding aisle. The front of the tank rack was walled/insulated in and an insulated interior door was placed on the framed out open end. A ceramic heater heated the back of the fish closet keeping the tanks at proper temp.

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Belly up · Feb 20, 2015

Once again duanes has it figured out, though I use 1" rigid foam. Depending on what fish you have you could lower that temp some more. Seventy-eight is still pretty warm unless you have discus or are spawning your fish. Right now my Freddy (avatar) is at sixty-eight and is doing just fine.

duanes · Feb 20, 2015

I also agree with this, most tropical fish can easily handle low 70s. And many sub tropicals such as the Geophagus braziliensus complex, Gymnogeophagus, or many of the northern Mexican species do best when temps are lower.

Belly up said:
Once again duanes has it figured out, though I use 1" rigid foam. Depending on what fish you have you could lower that temp some more. Seventy-eight is still pretty warm unless you have discus or are spawning your fish. Right now my Freddy (avatar) is at sixty-eight and is doing just fine.

xraycer · Feb 20, 2015

This is my 180 in an unheated basement. I also used the same rigid foam to construct a canopy

Rachel.Cody · Feb 20, 2015

Here you can see it has rigid foam about half way up the wall. I used to work for an insulation company so I know how all of it goes. But I may try to do a duct to the tanks. My big tank has Bichir and gar in it. The 75 has Angels and rummy nose in it and the 29 has a pair of bristlenose in it. How low can I bring down the temps?

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Keeping Tanks Warm in unheated basement

Rachel.Cody

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