tank temp too warm?

[Apon]

Ok so on my 25 gallon tank at work, I upgraded my lights to a 250 hqi....it runs for about 9 hours. The tank temp in the morning before the tank lights turn on is 74, when they turn off its 82. Its been like this for 3 weeks and nothing really bad has happened yet. Although my angel and clowns started beating up on my cardinal for no reason at all.....but the corals and inverts seem ok. Actually they seem bigger. I have 3 or 4 RBTAs, some leathers, GSP, and rics, some purple mushroms and anthellia. I have a fan on order, but just wanted to see what you guys thought. To much heat to fast?

 

[northbay-reefer]

Your temp is within safe range so I think you will be ok. The shallow part of the reef can change in temp like that so what you have in your tank should be ok as long as the changes in temp is not sudden. I would deffinitely use something to cool the tank down though because longterm temp swing can be stressfull for the fishes and corals. If you are using fan to cool down small tank then I would worry more about evaporation and salinity changes becasue that is much more stressfull. Use a temp controller to keep temp more constant. Get one of those small electrostatic chiller they are cheap.

 

[zepplock]

74 is too low.
My office tank was 78-82 all the time.

 

[jkreefer]

I agree 74 is a bit on the cold side. Do you use heater or just let the light do the heating?

 

[Raddogz]

I think 74 is fine, if I recall it's mainly a softie/lps tank. My smaller tank (58g) comes down as low as 74 and gets up to 78 on a warm day.

Rather than 9hrs, why not 8 or less hours.

 

[bareefers]

Just a note on water temps in the wild.. I thought it was pretty interesting when I went to Belize how much the water temps varied on the real reefs.. the top of the water was about 84F avg and when I free dove down to 12 feet the temp dropped 5+ deg (maybe as much as 10 in places)... pretty significant variance I think. Just swimming in the top 5 feet of water over reefs the water temp would fluctuate quite a bit from place to place..

BTW, if any of you make it down to Belize.. try and snorkle Ranguanas Caye if you can.. truly an amazing experience.

 

[bookfish]

I'd expect the swing to stress the fish a bit. They're probably less used to daily temp flux. I'd also keep the tank lightly stocked as it's tough to keep high DO levels in a small tank when it heats up.

 

[Apon]

Thanks for the input.....I was thinking about lessening the photoperiod, but when my fan comes in that should help. I will watch out for the evaporation as well. So far only 4 small fish in the 25 gallon. 2 perc clowns, a lemon peel angel, and a purple dottyback. : )

 

[Ibn]

You can just increase the temperature in the tank so that there's less variance, unless there's no heater on there.