Cooling Down An Aquarium

[bluegravel]

So I have a cold water white cloud tank. I don't use a heater. and yet still the temperature keeps jumping on and off with the increase of warm weather. I'd like it to be around 72, but even with leaving the light off, having the fan blowing on it, it keeps staying at 75-77. Is there something i can get to cool down the tank? If I bought a heater with an adjustable temperature can I set it to 72 and it would stay there? What should I do?

 

[AstonN24vantage]

im afraid there's nothing you can do. heaters turn off when the water's the right temperature, or too high, but they can't cool water. its probably not a huge deal, WCMM are strong fish.

 

[bluegravel]

Don't they have an aquarium cooler fan, or chiller or something like that? i thought i saw that somewhere

 

[redbug]

they do sell chillers but they are exspensive.
you can make yourown out of a small fridge. and some copper tubing

 

[Katty]

You could maybe freeze plastic bottles of water and stick them in the tank. Just make sure to not fill the bottles to the top cuz the ice expands, and to cap the bottles AFTER you freeze them. Keep a few of them in the freezer at a time so you can just swap them out once the one in the tank melts. You could experiment with the different sized bottles. I don't know how much it would actually cool things and it might be hard to keep switching the bottles around the clock, so hopefully its not hot for long?

 

[nurglespuss]

You can convert a CPU fan to an 'in hood' cooler fan, leaving a decent gap between hood/top of tank will also help (or removing hood).

Other methods are - invest in a larger tank, larger volumes of water are much slower to warm up/cool down.

While the weather is warm, turn your heater up to say, 74-76 to reduce temp fluctuations, your clouds will be fine.

The fan you are using, does it face the glass or the water? If you can, position the fan (on a stand, table etc) so that it blows directly accross the tanks surface.

Good luck!

 

[bluegravel]

I tried the freezer bottle thing. didnt really work too good.

and the fan I'm using faces the glass.

I thought about investing in a new heater with an adjustable thermostat and setting it at about 70 degrees. would this help?

 

[davec1960]

I thought about investing in a new heater with an adjustable thermostat and setting it at about 70 degrees. would this help?

No, as the temperature is above 70 the thermostat will keep the heater switched off.

The only way to reduce the temperature is to take heat (ie energy out of the water)
A chiller will do this very well but will be expensive
The frozen water bottles were doing this as energy was needed to melt the ice. The reason that it didn't work was probably due to having a small amount of frozen water and a large tank volume of warm water.

Blowing air across the surface of the water may do this if it increases the evaporation rate of the water as it will take energy to change water from the liquid state to gaseous state.
I suspect that the effect will be pretty neglibable though

 

[nurglespuss]

Yes as i said, fan facing glass does nothing.

 

[OldMan47]

As redbug said, you can use a chiller to hold down the temperature of your water. I have much the same dilemma with many of my goodeids. They like temperatures far less then typical local summer air temperatures.

 

[AstonN24vantage]

turn the ac on