For you MFKers in warm climates

[MTBjake]

How do you guys keep your tanks cool? Any great ideas?
I have my 240 and 135 in the house so they're all set, but I have a 40, 20 and 80 in my garage and with summertime in SoCal coming I'm trying to get prepared. The last couple days have been pretty warm and the tanks have gotten up to 87 and I've been cooling them with frozen water bottles but warmer temps will be coming soon so I am looking for some great ideas.



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[Fat Homer]

In Hong Kong where it gets pretty hot during the summer people have basically 2 options... 1) use fans attached to the top of their tanks, as a cheaper method of cooling, 2) Invest in a cooling unit...

Other methods such as yours also work, the only problem i've noticed on small tanks is it doesn't take long for them to warm back up again... so unless your actually home to keep an eye on the temps, i find floating water bottles of ice etc don't always help, and in fact can some times do more harm than good... reason i say this is because you end up fluctuating the temps more so by adding and removing iced water bottles...

-EDIT-

Actually, there is also technically a 3rd method... which is also the most useless in a way... which is to keep your room temp down... this normally means keeping the Air-conditioner on indoors, which i know in your case maybe pointless, since your tanks are in the garage...

 

[MTBjake]

In Hong Kong where it gets pretty hot during the summer people have basically 2 options... 1) use fans attached to the top of their tanks, as a cheaper method of cooling, 2) Invest in a cooling unit...

Other methods such as yours also work, the only problem i've noticed on small tanks is it doesn't take long for them to warm back up again... so unless your actually home to keep an eye on the temps, i find floating water bottles of ice etc don't always help, and in fact can some times do more harm than good... reason i say this is because you end up fluctuating the temps more so by adding and removing iced water bottles...

-EDIT-

Actually, there is also technically a 3rd method... which is also the most useless in a way... which is to keep your room temp down... this normally means keeping the Air-conditioner on indoors, which i know in your case maybe pointless, since your tanks are in the garage...

Yeah that's my issue is many days I work 12hr days and will not be around to ice the tanks. Also because it's in my garage, my garage isnt insulated so cooling the room doesn't really do much for me.
I will have to see how cool a fan will keep it. I was thinking about running the tanks together to a rubbermaid container that sits on the concrete and hoping the return water from the container would have a cooling effect. Definitely don't want to buy a chiller unless it's absolutely needed.
Thanks for the reply Fat Homer.


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[Fat Homer]

I'll be honest and say fans will only really cool the tanks a little bit depending on sizes of the tank and fan...

Your method might work as well if the tub is in a cool area out of the sun... Maybe ultimately combining the two methods might work even better helping bring temps down another degree or two...

Although that last part is a guess on my behalf..


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[MTBjake]

Okay thanks man. I kinda figured I'd get only a couple degrees out of it. I think what I'll try to do is build a new stand for the 80 and see if I can fit it in the house somewhere and move the stock around from the 40 and 20 and experiment with cooling theories with empty tanks.


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