a nother chiller???

does somebody know how to drop my temp
with out dropping $1,000 on a chiller
my temp is 79 to 84

 

Chiller is a great investment, my 1/4HP chiller only cost me $600.

 

Get some fans and let them blow across the top of your water. Change your light cycle so that your lights come on at night when it's cooler. Freeze some bottles of water and float them in your tank. Run your a/c.

 

Covered it +1

 

ok thanks
but what size bottle to use
8 oz 12oz

 

I used these to blow air over my tank before I got my chillers:
Masscool by Fanner Tech 4B02S4 Speeze HD Cooler
I have 3 JBJ chillers now. 1/4hp for my 150g, 1/5hp for the 65g, 1/15hp for my 20g and the fan is on my nano. Depending on your tank size, the fans may not be enough. On my 150 is did absolutely nothing, on the 20g it dropped the temp 3º down to 79ºF, on the nano, it keeps the temp at 68-69ºF.
I picked all my chillers up on sale, all less than $600. I just picked up the 1/4 for $500 on sale at Dr Foster and Smith.

 

79 is just fine, 84 probably won't hurt anything. quick swings would do more damage than a gradual climb over the course of the day. Albuquerque's getting warm again and so far my tank has stayed 79-82 and I'm not even worried about it.

Do you have one of those annoying digital thermometers that set off an alarm if they go over 75? that's a safe threshold for a freshwater tank, marines can go much higher. If you can get past the tone of it check out the "heatwave" thread a bit below this one, that guy is hitting 90's and so far he says all is surviving.

I'd go with the frozen water bottles in the sump and/or a fan blowing on the surface. Size of the bottle doesn't really matter, 12-24 oz would be good. The bigger the bottle the more surface area which is really all that matters. You can also use zip lock bags and ice cubes if you have nothing else.

A longer yet still short term solution is a coil of plastic tube in a bucket of ice and a small pump.

g/l staying cool down there!

-Doug

 

84º can kill off a number of creatures. Getting past the 80º will wipe out anemones pretty fast, corals will retract as well. If it's fish only, it won't be as critical, depending on the type of fish. Seahorses will fall in warm water as well.

 

My tank temperature right now are between 84-86 which had been like these for two weeks now and it hasn't had any bad effect yet to my corals and fish. They don't retract when the light is on, and I'm keeping variety of soft, LPS and SPS corals. Although I admit this is the best tank temperature.

 

I always used 2 liter bottles but I have a big tank. Use whatever size will not displace enough water in the tank for it to spill over.