PlanetCatfish.com

hi

well i picked up my tank yesterday and by midnight the sand, plants, rocks and water were in and the filter and heater were switched on.

Everything looks okay - but the heater seems to be stuggling to heat the water. It is working as it's pretty hot but it just seems to be taking a long time to heat the water. This is fine at the moment because i have no fish in there but when i come to do water changes i'm going to drop the temperature of the tank and then my fish will be in colder water. I 'm also concerned that if it takes too long to get the temperture up again if might co-inside with the next water change - hence my heater is always on catch-up.

Do people put a second heater in after water changes to get the tempeture back up quicker or is this more dangerous for the fish - quick drops and rises in temperature.

thanks

ruth

You are better off having 2 smaller heaters than 1 large one. That way if one fails you won't totally lose temperature.

Hi roo
When you first set up a tank it will take a long time for it to heat up to the required temp from cold also IMO
when the tank set up and doing a water change with cold water say 25% the heater should raise the temp by aprox 1 degree per hour if you do heat it to quickly it may affect the fish.I have always used cold water changes in all 4 of my tanks and if I don't want the water to dive in temp to low when water changing like my L46s I'm running at 30 degrees I use a smaller pipe (or put a tap on the end,crimp it with a clamp)to return the water to the tank and this puts it in slower thus temp stays up my 46s water never drops during changing the water no more than a degree.My other tanks I run at 27 to 28 and on my 6 foot tank when I water change drops to 21 degrees and this does not have any ill effect on the fish.

Hope this is helpful Jerry

Hi

Thanks for your replies. However I have a confession. I have had a bit of a problem reading my thermometer. Sorry this is all still very new to me and this forum is always getting me out the poop.

I was reading the 'in' temperature as the temperature inside the tank and the 'out' temperature being the temperature outside the tank. No. The 'out' is in the tank and the 'in' is in the thermometer - did make sense when re-thought it. I thought i had a reading of 17c at midnight and 18c at 10am this morning which made me think i was getting a 1c increase every 10 hours.

Thanks for the re-assurance on water changes I don't think the fish I'm getting will have too much of a problem will a temperature drop now that I know it's not going to take 3 days to regain the correct temperature.

Ruth

Hi roo
No probs one of my 4 tank thermometers reads the wrong way round got me worried the out temp is tank and the in temp is the room.lol

Best of luck Jerry

The brochure for VisiTherm heaters say that a 250 liter tank with a room temperature vs. tank temperature difference of 10'C requires a 250W heater. So if you want your tank to be 27'C or higher, then you may need the next size up heater (and if you DO decide to change your heater, I definitely recommend a VisiTherm heater over a replacement Juwel heater. They even fit in the same holder). Or get, say, a 100W VisiTherm heater and place it at the other end of the tank.

Having said that, my 400 liter tank has a 300W heater, and it copes with heating my tank to 28'C, and my room aren't that warm - around 20'C at the most.

And yes, fast drops in temperature is much less harmful than quick raise in temperature.

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Mats

Hi nice one good post.
Mats.

And yes, fast drops in temperature is much less harmful than quick raise in temperature.

Thanks Jerry

OK, never gave much thought to this before, but in 20 years of fish keeping I have always made it a habit to replace my tank water with WARMER water, 2-5 F. warmer. I use the python hose setup and preadjust the temperature at the faucet, prior to refilling the tanks. My take has always been that since fish are cold blooded, a sudden drop in temp would shock their systems, whereas a warmer change would be easier and more comfortable to them...like stepping into a nice warm bath for me. Perhaps I'm out to lunch on this....never researched it....but it made sense to me and has never caused me any problems. My fish in general over the past 10 years anyway, as my skills improved, have tended to stay healthy and live many years. Am I wrong??....always willing to learn:)

Hi shadowcat

What you are saying about pre heating your water to the temp of your tank before water changing it is ok the same as my prefrance is I don't heat mine,what I am saying is that fish can withstand cold water changes(as in breeding season type)which can happen as and when you do weakly normal cold water changes.But the fish cannot withstand water heated up to quickly over a short period of time(as in cooking it)which can happen if you use to bigger heater for the size of tank.When I cold water change my tank I trickle it in the temp drops slowly(meaning not chucking a bucket of water in all at once)as in your case you can put a bucket of pre heated water (your tank temp)in to no ill affect to your fish.Hope I have put this in a way it can be understood.

I would like to point out that what I have written is in no way telling anybody on this site what to do or not do also not to engage in an argument about the rights and the wrongs hot or cold water changing as there is't one.

Hope this explains and helps Jerry

Hello Jerry58. Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I agree that it's more likely rapid changes than gradual ones, in either direction that are likely to cause problems. In my experience fish can tolerate extremes well below their comfort zones. Probably not so well in the upper direction due to reduced oxygen in the water. I have on occasion (dummy in a hurry) forgotten to plug my heaters back in during the winter. Since I use a woodstove as primary heat, some rooms...where there are tanks...tend to be much cooler than others. As a consequence I have seen temps as low as 60F before I realized what I'd done. Once I plugged the heaters back in and things got back to normal temps, never saw a problem from it. The clue was actually that the fish stopped eating because their metabolism was sooo slow....ok, that and the earmuffs!!!...Hey, no problem on your input. This is a learning site as much as anything and since I'm the only hobbiest I know personally, I've had to learn mostly by trial and error over the years, and buying some good books. I'm always open to advice or better ways of doing things:)

Hi once again shadowcat

Thanks for your reply.

I'm only here to hopefully help and enjoy.

Best of luck Jerry

As long as the water coming into the tank isn't MUCH warmer than the water in the tank, it's not really a problem. 2'F is a small difference.

However, warmer water holds less oxygen, which is ONE of many contributors to the health of the fish. Lower temperature is better.

I tend to use water that is slightly cooler than the water in the tank, about 2-5'C, I guess. When I'm using RO water, it is heated by a heater set for 22'C (72'F). But I change up to 50% of the water in one go.

Also consider the actual tap-water temperature. If your tap-water runs under ground, it is bound to be about the average temperature for the area you live in. In the south of the UK, that's about 14'C (59'F or so). For Dave Rinaldo, who lives in Austin, I happen to know that it's about 22'C / 72'F. That's about 8'C / 15'F difference. Obviously, if you replace half the tank with water that is 8'C lower than someone else, the temperature drop will be bigger.

Smaller water changes can be done with bigger temperature difference, of course.

And of course, in some places, the temperature in the ground will vary enough to make a difference in the tap-water temperature.

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Mats

Hi

Thanks for all your advice. I'm going to buy another heater that I double up as a spare and also use to pre-heat my water before a change. Might get the one Mat advised earlier and then use my juwel as the spare. I'll have to measure the temp of our mains water but i recon it's about 5c. The water in overhead tank in loft is probably 15c as it's pretty warm in the loft this time of year but this waters been sitting around so I'd rather use the mains.

My tank is nice and warm and settled down to a temp range of 27.2c to 27.7c. Though I'm a bit peed off cause i was sold a couple of dodgy plants which were removed last night. One of which was habouring an archor worm - our first sign of life in the tank and it's pest. Anyway he's in the bin with the plants.

Has anyone got any good tips on empting and filling a tank in a carpeted room. We filled the tank using a syphon from a bucket on a tall stool on a coffee table to get a good water head but this was very wobbly and we had the cardboard on the floor that the tank came in so it got wet rather than the carpet.

I thought of buying a set of step ladders but before I do I thought I'd see if there were any better ideas.

Thanks

Ruth

Siphon it out the nearest window, that's what I've always done. Much easier and faster than the painful bucket routine!! If you can't do that for some reason, use a longer hose and run it into your bath tub. That should be low enough for a good siphon too. You should be able to find an adaptor that will allow you to hook up a hose from your kitchen faucet and run it to your tank for refills. That way you can preset the temp at the faucet before you even fill the tank. Over here they sell something called a "python hose". It's specifically designed for just that purpose. I highly recommend it for all but very small tanks. It's much faster and easier. Best of luck!!

For filling, I'd use a hose from a suitable tap (bathroom, perhaps) [or if the tank is downstairs and you have an upstairs bathroom with a proper bath, you could always get some water in the bath and drain it via siphon down the stairs - gives nice high speed flow if the hose is big enough too - just don't do that if you have just washed the bath with a load of strong cleaners and bleach!].

For most of my water changes that I have to do manually, I use RO water, which is stored in two 25g loft-tanks, and I have a OceanRunner 3500 pump that pushes the water out at at least the same pressure as my cold-water tap.

For draining tanks, I use a 12 meter long 3/4" PVC pipe attached to the gravel cleaner, that I either route to an outside drain [actually in the sort of porch-like room that holds a washing machine, etc], or to the lawn.

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Mats