Cooling the water without a cooler?
- Thread starter alexanian
- Start date
i work at keeping my acrylic aquarium at or below 83 degrees.. i've got a spray bar across the top of the water.. sprays the water about 6 - 8" across the top of the water. i turn the lights off and keep one of the lids open for air flow and it keeps a nice steady 83.. sometimes on the 110+ days it goes up to about 86 degrees. but even that i think is good in my situation because i have no A/C in my house, only fans to keep the air moving so it doesn't feel so hot.
Thnx everyone for the ideas, so far I'm thinking that the best thing would be to keep the tank open. The problem is that my lighting is attached to the lid. I have to figure some way to make a stand for the lighting while keeping the tank open or a stand made of grating and possibly get one of those small fans attach it to the lighting to blow on the water surface. Right now I'm trying to keep the lights off for as much as possible, but this is def a project that should b donne by next summer. The temp outside get's very hot here in the summer, up to 120 F so the tank gets somewhere around 90 and although I haven't lost any fish from the heat I can tell that they're not feeling comfy.
I have to keep the temp around 65-70 for my axolotls, and I've found that keeping no lid with a fan blowing across the water works really well for me. The water evaporates REALLY quickly though, and that gets annoying. The evaporation is what keeps the temperature down though, so it's okay.
Yea I figured there will be alot of evaporation going on, that was actually the reason I put the lid on. Well that and a crustacian that kept crawling out and scaring everybody
But I never thought it would make a difference with the temperature. Although there was no fan at the time........@Spirit: U can't really see on a pic how the lighting and the lid work together but basically the light is mounted on the lid, without the lid it'll b unstable and flip over (it was a very slopy DYI project
). i'll try to get a pic of the whole tank later, but the thing in question is in the backFreeze water in zip lock bags and float them in your tank. My two large tanks are in the garage and I have to do this on real hot days.......works like a charm.
Yea i was thinking about that for a quick fix on extra hot days, but i was afraid that adding super cold ice might shock the fish or smth if they come to investigate it. So it worked for u? No fish was affected by it? Do you take the ice out of the bag and float it or keep it in the bag till it unfreezes and then freeze it again if needed?
Yea I figured there will be alot of evaporation going on, that was actually the reason I put the lid on. Well that and a crustacian that kept crawling out and scaring everybody
I'm on an axolotl forum too, and it was explained to me on there that the evaporation is actually what cools the water because it takes the heat with it. or something along those lines. my knowledge of basic science is pretty limited haha! that's why with the fan and no lid, the water evaporates really fast, but it also cools down a lot faster. give and take i guess
Most of my fish just ignore the bags and none of them hang near the top. I keep the ice in the zip lock bags and just reuse if necessary. I use the 1 qt freezer bags that ziplock makes. I usually start with 4 in the 125g and 5 with the 180g.
