Keeping aquariums cool

Overheating of your aquarium can be a real problem. Lights, pumps and all the other associated equipment that go along with your aquarium all add their own little bit of heat to the water. Some things add only a little, some things quite a lot.

Heat management in your aquarium is crucial during hot weather as you can very quickly see the temperature in your aquarium skyrocketing over 30 degrees when we get a few warm days. This is a problem because as the temperature of the water rises, the ability of the aquarium's water to hold dissolved oxygen decreases, and once the temperature tops 30 degrees or so, the D.O. levels can plummet quite dramatically. When this happens, the animals with the highest oxygen demand usually suffer first, and if an animal succumbs to the decreased oxygen levels, the decay of the corpse at a high temperature is very rapid.

Rapid decay of organic material in turn uses up oxygen from the water, further compounding the problem. Things snowball from here & things can get messy and very disheartening.

To stop this some things that you can do are:

1) Turn off the lights.. Lights are usually a big source of excess heat, particularly in reef tanks. Keeping the lights off for the duration of the hot weather won't cause any harm, but will help keep transferred heat down.

2) Open up the top of the tank.. Removing cover glasses or hoods from the tank will allow for greater evaporation from the body of the aquarium and when this happens it has a cooling effect on the water that is left behind.

3) Set up a fan.. A fan blowing across the top of the water's surface will help to encourage further evaporation from the tank (see step2)

4) Float Ice in the tank.. A plastic soft drink bottle filled with water that is then frozen can be a great way to drop the temperature of an aquarium by a few degrees. This does of course rely on the fact that you have done some pre preparation, but if you haven't, then a sealed plastic bag full of ice cubes will suffice. It is important not to allow the melting water to mix with the water of the aquarium as the water that the ice has been made from is not likely to be suitable "aquarium water".

5) Run air conditioning in the room.. If air con is available in the room, then run it for as long as required to help maintain a reasonable temperature within the tank.

The main keys to prevent these sorts of problems from occurring are mainly preparation based. If you know that a scorcher is predicted for a given day, then have your ice packs pre made.... Leave the lights off before you go to work. If need be leave the a.c. on a low setting for the day.. etc. etc.

It is far better to do a little prep work and avoid the problem than to have to try & mop up after the problem has occured.

You may have noticed that we did not suggest turning off or turning down the heater.

This is because your heater is thermostatically controlled, and should not be turning on if the water temperature is above the set point of the heater. Of course if your heater's light is on while your temperature is above normal then it is important to remove & replace your heater as it is potentially faulty.