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I am new to fish & purchased from a local aquarium in order to get advice & assistance. The tank was a birthday present for our 3yr old in March 2005 and Xmas eve we lost all our fish & weed except for 2 Bristlenose Catfish. (Died: 2 x Golden Barbs, 3 x Clown Loaches & 1 x Sailfin Catfish)

The people at the aquarium said that it was probably the water overheating with our summer heat (42 in our house - tank thermometre said 33??) I don't understand all the 'fishy' & 'pump' talk but my husband has purchased the things the aquarium has advised ....

We have had conflicting advice from another aquarium owner and I am just wondering what suggestions people here might have for reducing tank temperatures.

ETA: We are in Australia - I'm not sure how our temps compare to America .... sorry if this causes any confusion



Last edited by snovantage at 28-Dec-2005 23:57

welcome
hope u can tell us more abt the tank..like the size...water parameters...and so on.

is ur tank got a heater??? coz if it does..i think u can turn it off...where is the tank located??

did u encounter sickness in the tank like ich, so on??

some of the solutions for high temp
air conditoner
turning oof the lights during noon time (like for 2 hrs if ur loight is on at that time)
if u have a hood,take the lid off
electric fan cooling the surface of the water
cold bottled water(i dont recommend)

Hi,
WELCOME TO FISH PROFILES!

If my math is correct, that is the same as 107F and that
is way too hot for very nearly any fish! As the water
climbs in temperature, the amount of oxygen it can hold
drops drastically. The fish probably died of lack of O2,
and their systems were overtaxed by the heat, much like
humans with Heat Stroke.

To control the heat, or at least dissipate some of it
you can take the top off the tank and have a fan blow
across the surface.
You can float a zip lock bag of ice in the tank (be careful
of this method you can cause more harm than good).
You can add an air pump and an air stone or two
to circulate the water and agitate the surface.
This will ensure that the water is holding the max
amount of oxygen that it can at that temperature.

What type of light do you have on the tank? If it is a
slender globe with a filament running down it that screws
into a socket, then it is most probably an incandescent
light bulb. This type of light is normally supplied with
that size tank, and is the worst kind for them as they
give off so much heat that it actually heats up the water.
If that is the type of bulb that you have, I would
recommend that you go to a hardware store and purchase one
of the screw in compact fluorescent bulbs to replace it.
They look like this: Click here

Purchase one that is labeled DAYLIGHT or SUNLIGHT only.
Don't get one that says WARM or SOFT on the label these
are for reading only.

Hope this helps...
Frank

Last edited by FRANK at 29-Dec-2005 00:26

Last edited by Fallout at 31-Dec-2005 01:10

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Thank You for your posts !! Greatly appreciated ..

The tank is 3ft long,about 2 ft high &amp; 1 ft deep. My hubby says it is about 25-30 gallons??? It is a complete sealed unit with lights in the lid - Brand is a 'sun sun' ... we don't have air conditioning in the house so we have been turning the lights off completely &amp; leaving the flap on the lid open, to be on the safe side we have turned the heater off at the power supply and have been using empty coke bottles with frozen water in them as a method of trying to cool the water down.

We have an internal canister filter and a powerhead running a lid 3 stage biological filter plus we just put in a 2 foot long air wall ( I have NO IDEA what I just said - my hubby told me what to write) We have bumped up the amount of weed in the tank as told by one aquarium operator but we were then told to take it out by another ??? YIKES !!!

Yes the temp conversion I believe was correct - bloody hot !! I was heartbroken for these fish and couldn't believe the bristlenoses made it ... they are still in the tank and the temp has come down somewhat but is still too hot at around 28 in our novice opinions ... we aren't game enough to buy more fish at this point incase our lack of experience causes more deaths - am just at a loss as to how to cool these poor little things down.

We will be off to the shops in the morning to check out the 'fan' idea .. the tank is situated on it's own stand in our lounge room against a wall and in an area where it gets the breeze (when there is a breeze) from air going from the front door to the back (approximately the middle of the house) and has a normal ceiling fan about 3 feet away which we leave turned on 24/7 in the hope it will help.

Thanks Again for your assistance and my apologisies if our lack of knowledge has offended anyone. It was my aim to post here to help our fish ... Cheers Sharen

28C is a little better. Idealy 25-27C is what you should be aiming for.

In addition to Frank's suggestions for cooling the water, aiming a fan directly at the surface of the water will help cool the tank too.

No need to apologise for lack of knowledge, we are here to help.

Welcome to Fishprofiles.

Lindy

---

Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

no AC= no fun

Try to lower the room temperature too mabye add another fan or 2 to lower the temp in the room, or you could move it to the basement (if you have one) that would help.

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man" Simpsons

im not sure if this was suggested, but if you do have some problems with heat, make sure to run alot of oxygen into the water with air hoses. when the heat is up in the water, the oxygen decreases, making it hard for the fish to breathe.

*Chelle*
_______________________________________________
I love the fishes cuz they're SOOO delicious...

I had the same problem last week where my tank was sitting at 30 deg. Usually is at 26.5 to 27. Our house was at 36deg coz we had no air-con.

The best way l found to cool down a tank was to get some 1.25lt coke bottles and fill them up with water then freeze them over night. Once you see the temp go up, place a bottle in the tank (last for just under 1hr). Once the ice in the bottle is gone, place back in freezer and grab the next frozen bottle. Don&#8217;t let the water in the bottle enter the tank.

When l was doing this it was keeping the tank temp down by 1 to 1.5 deg. adding the fan will also help drop the temp.

Also, most heaters have a thermostat so you don&#8217;t need to turn these off as they will not turn on if the temp is over heater setting.

Lucky for me l didnt loose any fish
Tank size 4&#8217;x14&#8221;x18&#8221; (160lt water volume)
2x neons
4x black widows
2x Peppermint Pleco's
2x Bolivian Ram

First, the good news.

While being raised to those kind of elevated temperatures on a long term basis is a bad idea for any aquarium fish, they're capable of surviving heatwaves. After all, they have to in the wild sometimes! It's not unusual for some aquarium species to be found in the wild in water at a similar temperature to your aquarium. However, there's one important difference. Those bodies of water are generally FAR larger than any aquarium you'll see outside of the giant public aquaria that are used to house full-sized sharks!

Your fishes had to cope in 160 litres of water that got warm. Fishes in the wild have the advantage that their bodies of water are measured in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of litres (and in the case of Amazonian fishes, billions of litres!) and those bodies of water are deep enough for a temperature gradient to exist. So, the really warm water at the surface that gets all the sun is sometimes as much as 15&#176;C warmer than the water at the depths (which in the case of the Amazon could be anything from 3 metres below the surface to a whopping 30 metres!). So, fishes the like it cool can migrate away from the heat if their home waters are subject to a sudden heatwave.

Once a heatwave is under way, the critical factor is water movement. Moving water equals gas exchange. Thanks to a less than happy aspect of physical chemistry, the capacity of water to hold any particular gas in solution decreases as the temperature increases. So at 42&#176;C, the holding capacity of your aquarium with respect to the vital oxygen your fishes need is considerably reduced. To make matters worse, their metabolic rates (and hence oxygen consumption) are increased by the heat.

However, keeping the water moving helps. A good current in the aquarium results in gas exchange at the surface. Carbon dioxide is liberated into the surrounding atmosphere, and oxygen is taken on board. There's a limit to how much or how fast this can take place, and again, at higher temperatures, you're fighting the laws of physics, but it's a winnable battle.

First step - powerheads. Those nice little electric motor gizmos that are used to drive undergravel filters in modern setups. Get one or two extra powerheads and use them to increase the aquarium current. You could even attach the clip on canister filter to the bottom (my powerhead came with one of these) and give your fishes extra filtration into the bargain, which in the circumstances will help a fair amount.

Second step - cooling. You can actually obtain chilling units for situations like this, but they tend to be expensive, and not something you have lying around the house on the off chance. But, with a lot of coiled siphon tubing, a powerhead and a spare bucket, you can put together an emergency 'Heath Robinson' cooler.

Here's what you do.

[1] Get enough tubing so that you can coil about 30 or 40 feet of it in a large bucket, like a sort of pipework spring, and still have enough at the ends to reach the aquarium. Get an extra powerhead also.

[2] Once you've coiled 30-40 feet in the large bucket, stick one end in the aquarium as your intake. Start siphoning some water into the tube to fill the tube (the old suck on the other end bit) and once you've got the tube full, keep your thumb over the other end.

[3] Take the other end to the aquarium, and attach it to the extra powerhead. You may find you'll need some ingenuity to make the attachment reasonably solid, but most powerheads have a conical adapter to make them fit different sized undergravel uplift tubes. You can work around this when necessity becomes the mother of invention!

[4] Make sure you have no large trapped air bubbles in the system. Hence the siphoning bit mentioned in [2] above.

[5] Start your powerhead.

[6] Drop lots of ice cubes and cold tap water into the bucket.

Hey presto, one 'Heath Robinson' emergency chiller.

It'll take time to kick in, but once it does, you can start breathing a sigh of relief. Just remember to swap out the water in the bucket every now and again and dump in some fresh ice and cold water.

Hope this helps ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

now why didnt l think of that

We have hit summer in OZ and the temps are hotter then other years. I think l have myself a little project.

Thanks for the info
Wayne