Over heating of tank

[Friends of the fish]

Hello

Two friends and myself have all started our tanks at the same time. We have all incountered the same problem (at diffrent times).
We have all lost and keep loosing fish due to the heat (we live in South Africa - JHB). We have all removed our heaters from the tank and this is not helping. The tank reaches about 30 degress in the day.
So even the hardiest of tropical fish are struggling. We have installed fountain pumps to increase circulation in the tank hoping this will cool the tank down, it helps a little but not enough. We have even added ice blocks to the tank for extreem measures.
Do you have any other ideas to assist us?
We are all loving having our tanks and do not want to give up the wonderful hobby.

 

[catman]

Hello!!

Welcome to the forum!!

Firstly.. don't add ice blocks direct, unless the water was treated before it was frozen, otherwise you are probably adding chlorine to your tank...

Instead, fill up small coke bottle's (or something similar) and freeze them. Then you can place these into the tank with no contmination problems...

The tank lights will also add heat to the tank, i have heard of people combating this problem by fitting fans that blow accross the water surface and having plenty of surface agitation caused by airstones.. The fans should take some of the heat away...

Thats about all i can think of at the moment, other than an expensive chilling system....

Mine tank temp. is 30C, but i keep discus and they like that temp... Could always change your fish!!

 

[Amadaca]

Living in Sydney, I experience temps in & around 40 during the summer, & dont experience any problems. Try a transparent visor over the aquarium or make larger, more regular water changes with exceptionally cooler water. You may want to consider stripping the aquarium down & relocating it to the coolest place possible.

 

[aquamaniac2003]

It sounds like this is a long term seasonal problem that may proove to be too awkward floating bottles of ice in the tank.
I have never tried this for aquariums but a heat exchanger is the best solution.
Without doing a drawing it is had to describe.

You need a box to house a small rediator, a water pump and a fan.
The pump takes the water out of the tank and pumps it through the radiator and back to the tank. The fan blows air accross the radiator and cools the water flowing through it.
The reason for the box is so that the fan forces air in from out side the box causing the box to pressurise slightly, this ensures that most of the air movement is accross the radiator.

I do not know if a car or motorcycle radiator is suitable because of the materials they are made of but this setup would solve the problem.

Good luck!

 

[cichlidmaster]

A chiller would also accomplish this although chillers tend to be expensive.

CM

 

[catman]

Or....

Keep tropicals that prefer higher temperature !!!!!

Sorry guys, never looked at it from a permanent problem before... Its rare enough over here in the UK just to have hot weather... let alone have it too hot for the fishes!!!

 

[Kirstie]

Hey!

Some fellow South Africans! I was born in Joberg myself! Now living in Canada! My advice to you guys would be to move your tank to the coolest part of your house! This means no direct sunlight. Not only does that heat up your tank but also makes the algae grow! I think your fish died because of the ice cubes! Chlorine is the worst thing to put in your tank. I had the exact same problem with my fish tank, but now I live in Canada, so we have developed basements, so mine is down there. This keeps it not to hot and not to cold! Unfortunately, we don't have basements in SA. Like I said, if there is a room in your house that is cooler than others and doesn't get that much sunlight in the day, keep the tank in there! Or, put the tank in a room with a lot of sunlight (not direct) and turn the tank light off, and turn it on at night. This could make a big difference! Good luck and let me know how Joberg is! i'm comin' out this summer!

 

[cichlidmaster]

Kirstie,

You bring up a good point. Actually one I never thought of before. As we all know, chlorine dissapates after 24 hours, but does it in a solid state such as ice cubes???

Think about it!!!!!!!!!!!

CM

 

[CFC]

A quite simple and reasonaply non expensive way of dealing with over heating is to use a external canister filter placed in a coolbox full of freezer blocks (or ice cubes but theese would probablly melt to quick).All you would need to do is slow the flow down a little so that the water has to spend a little extra time in the canister and hey presto chilled water going back in.PS you would have to drill a couple of holes in the coolbox lid for the filter hoses.

 

[catman]

You bring up a good point. Actually one I never thought of before. As we all know, chlorine dissapates after 24 hours, but does it in a solid state such as ice cubes???

Hey!!!

I raised that point on my first post!!!

LOL

 

[William]

Kirstie,

You bring up a good point. Actually one I never thought of before. As we all know, chlorine dissapates after 24 hours, but does it in a solid state such as ice cubes???

Think about it!!!!!!!!!!!

CM

Well I am doing chemistry at school so I shall try to explain, while this is true for NaCl - sodium chloride - plain old salt I would imagine it would be the same for chlorine because NaCl in water is the Na+ ion and the Cl- ion seperated. So just chlorine in water would be just Cl- ion.

Basically, things dissolve in a liquid because they lower the energy of the liquid. Taking water and salt as an example, when dissolved, salt dissociates into sodium ions and chlorine ions which are surrounded by water molecules because the electric charges on the ions attract water molecules strongly. Thus it is more energetically favourable for liquid water to have salt dissolved in it than not.

Now if the substances has a dissolved substance in it then this lowers its energy: if it didn’t lower its energy, the substance wouldn’t dissolve (it dissolves due to stronger intramolecular bonds). Thus by favouring the liquid in this way, the substance must be cooled to a lower temperature than normal in order to cause it to freeze. When water with salt freezes, the ice formed is essentially pure water ice, with only a very low concentration of the salt. The the solid which is formed is not solid “salt water”, but solid pure water, with additional salt precipitated out. (on top) You check this out by an experiment with freezing salty ice cubes and sucking them

So to conclude I'm pretty sure it would be the same for chlorine - chlorine has an extremely low melting point and so will be forced out of the water when it freezes while it is still in its gas phase. I may be wrong but this is the way I think it works..

My head hurts