How to rapidly cool a tank?

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Spiritofthesoul

Spiritofthesoul

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Dec 3, 2010
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Ok Im in need of advice again. I just came back from a 3D2N chalet. My dad was my bichir-sitter while I was away, BS for short :). I usually keep my tank temp at around 78 - 84 where my bichirs would be comfortable at.

But when I got home today, the thermometer was reading 95!!! I can imagine it must have been like under a sunbed for my bichirs. Apparently my dad forgot to switch off the lights after feeding and it was left on for more than 24 hours.

So I'm trying to lower my temp back. The obvious thing I did was to switch off the lights. Then I did a 30% WC to remove the hot water and replace them with cold water (I threw a couple of ice cubes in there, i know its stupid but who cares).

I was wondering how else do you cool your water? Does pointing both nozzle of the FX5 upwards help?

The temp now is 91.
 
Wow thats really hot, I had a heater not shut off once and the temp in my tank climbed to about 90 or so, when it was supposed to shut off @ 78. I trashed the heater and let the water cool down on its own, then put in a new heater that worked like it was supposed to. Be careful: you naturally want to freak out and cool your tank as fast as possible, but it can shock your fish and kill them, if their is an extreme change in temp. My advice to you would be to let it slowly drop on its own.. As long as its dropping things are getting better not worse..
 
2x 25W T8 light bulbs
 
Heater is fine and working.

I think it could be that the water level is just about 3 inch below the light. and the whole light is enclosed in a hood, hence no ventilation.

And we use celsius here. So unless my unit convertion is wrong, it was 35 degree celsius
 
Water change was definately a good move as long as you didnt make too drastic of one. When I accidentalyy got my tank too hot I managed to bring the temp down good by dropping the water level more than usual so that my HOB tanks and powerheads agitated the water surface more. I think that helped. I also tossed some frozen water bottles in and let them bob around for awhile.
 
You might want to check your heater again. There's no way leaving those lights on for a day could elevate your temp over 15 degrees. I have a heater( hydor) that seems to work just fine, but it heats almost 12degrees above what the dial says. To heat at 78 I have to set it at it's lowest setting which is around 66-68. Needless to say, that Hester pulls duty on my quarantine tank now as it helped get my 90 gallon to almost 88-89 degrees, and it "appeared" to function normally. Either that or your room temp was too high, but you'd have to run the heat on full blast to get that.

And like everyone said, bring it down slowly. Far more damage will be done by bringing it down quickly than by having the fish stay at 95 for a short period of time. I actually run my qt at 88-90 degrees when housing new fis to eliminate the chance of ich without medicating the fish. You just have to be patient and adjust your temps slowly, like 1-2 degrees every hour or so
 
Did you have alot of evaporation? Seems like if your lights were the cause you would lose more water than if it was the heater.
 
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