Cali Kid Corals

Warm weather and Temperature Swings

wpeterson

wpeterson

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With the warm weather this weekend I saw my tank rise to 80 degrees with the heater off all day. We don't have AC in our house so this due to the ambient temperature getting hot in the afternoon/evening.

I've hooked up a high speed fan in my sump for cooling and I'm debating what temperature ranges to allow. Should I try to keep the tank between 78-79? How much of a temp swing to folks allow with the warm weather here? It seems like allowing a range between 78-80 should be fine and save water/energy on cooling.

What do you folks require for temperature ranges in your tanks in hot weather?
 
I run mine on my Neptune Controller Season Table and it ranges from lowest 75.0 on Feb 1 and slowly raises up to 80.5 on Aug 1 and then back down to 75.0.

I feel if you keep your tank at a 24/7 constant temperature it is harder on your corals when you do have days like lately that are so hot...this way they can adjust to temp swings and survive.

Do you think in the ocean the temp stays the say all year long????
 
I also have two Ice trays of RODI ice cubes for the emergency over 82, but have had to use them as of yet...lol

Also if you do RODI ice cubes you can see a interesting effect in the cubes called ICE SPIKES
 
Thanks guys, this is exactly what I thought folks might do. Slow, seasonal temp spikes are supposed to help corals develop more temperature resilience. Also, natural temp swings in many reefs are larger than most home aquaria.

I think I'll also set my cooling system to turn on at 81 degrees or so and allow a range between 78-81.

I'd still love to hear from more folks what ranges of temperature you run and your philosophy on the subject.
 
evaporative cooling is a powerful too, blow a fan over your tank and/or sump, you lose water, but energy leaves as well and tank gets cooler.

If you have one of those fancy controllers hooked up you could always turn lights off at certain degrees of course the effectiveness will depend upon the light in question.

Temperature ranges anywhere between 75 to 83 are probably fine though. The big issue isn't the raw temperature it's other processes that go on as a result of the temperature, oxygen dropping, increase algae growth, etc.

I had one tank (softies) sit right in a window, go up to 90 degrees at noon or so. Stuff looked pissed off as all hell, but survived never the less, let that experiment run for about a month, I wouldn't suggest that with any hard corals though. But do note there are corals who get completely exposed to sunlight, or are in shallow tidepools that do regularly get to high temps, of course knowing if yours came from conditions like that is another question ;)
 
Temps were one of my biggest concerns when first even considered starting a small reef, because even though I live in SF, my apartment can get pretty warm. Then I remembered diving in southeast asia, where the water is often over 80, and reading other forums where folks routinely keep tanks at, or even above, 80. I have my tank set at 81, and if it gets stupid hot, ice cubes in ziplocks are my friends. When I do something dumb, my anemone seems to show stress first, so I'm hopeful that as long as it looks ok, other things should be good too. That being said, I haven't had the situation yet, so we'll see... I'm curious to hear other thoughts on this as well.
 
I keep my tank between 71.8 and 72.5 F in the winter and I am not planning on doing any cooling until it gets over 80 F. I haven't had it running during the summer yet, but this weekend it only got up to 73 F in the main tank and 75 F in the quarantine, so I think I'll be fine unless we have a serious heat wave.
 
my tank used to climb up to 84 on the hottest days, a couple seasons and then I realized that fans are amazing. Though a fan is not quite like a chiller but they can easily keep a tank around 79-80 on a particularly hot day and my tank is in the garage where there is no drywall, no insulation and the only part of the house that has no second level above it so the sun beats that roof and I assume that's where the bulk of the heat is from, anyway ever since I put my fan on (controlled via reef controller) I never saw the tank go over 80. Total investment was about $20
 
I have a variable speed 120mm box fan. I hard mounted it on the lip of my sump over the return chamber. I've got it set to 2500rpm (max) for the moment.

It's controlled by my Apex and I set it to turn on at 81 degrees, which should help provide a safe ceiling on the temperature. I had great luck with these put on the mesh lid of our two nano tanks, which did not have sumps. However, we didn't have a controller so I would manually place them on hot days since I was around more often.

Being able to control both a heater and a fan was one of the things that convinced me to invest in a controller.
 
Here is the back side of my canopy that I made so I can disconnect a couple wires and pull the canopy off for any reason:

Mounted on the Canopy:
2 A360WE Kessils
4 Adjustable 80mm Enetmax Fans
1 2-String LED moon lights

All controlled an the Apex with the Season Table & Lunar Cycle

IMAG0165.jpg

IMAG0172.jpg
 
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