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Hi,

Have a temperature problem with one of my tanks. This tank is a 20 Long and I have in it B. splendens and C. Juli. I notice a week ago that the temperature of the tank was reaching 89. I panicked I started to make water changes with water kept on the fridge and placing freezed plastic bottles on the filter to cool it down. But I can't get it below 83. It's a pain, I'm not always at home to change the bottles.

I know about water chillers, but what is best solution to is the best to cool the water?

Thanks for your help,

Raamses

Hi,

Most of my tanks are between those temperatures at the moment, I have a few types of Cory and they seem to be doing OK.

The easiest way I find to reduce temperature is cool water changes.

I see you are in Puerto Rico so the warm weather may last longer than here in the UK! Is there a chance you have air conditioning in one of your rooms which the Corys could be relocated to for the summer?

Failing that a shady place outside? If you consider putting them outside, maybe fill a bucket with water and monitor the temperature over a day or two, just to make sure it doesn't get even hotter than it does inside!

Hi Thanks for writing,

I wish I had the space to move them inside. We live in an apartment 4 adults, 4 cats with legs and 8 tanks. This tank is on balcony, shaded and it doesn’t receive direct sunlight, but the sun here is relentless. The water changes help a lot and with the ice bottles I keep it at bay but is not a long term solution since I return to work in 2 weeks. I fund someone on the web that uses a 5 gallon bucket with a bag of ice and he uses a pump to run a water line from the tank into the bucket to cool it and then back to the tank. I’ll try that.

The tanks inside are fine around 82 to 83. Is this tank that worries me. I mesure and I can’t fit it inside because the other won’t fit on that space. The owner of the store near by told me of a guy that keeps Axolotls and he made some kind of cooling system, so I asked him to pt me in contact with him. Let’s see if he can help.

Thanks again.

Raamses

It's tricky when you have multiple tanks!

The cooling system sounds interesting maybe you could have someone top it up with ice while you are away. If not do you have room to put the Corys in one of the tanks already inside? Or swap some of the fish inside for the Corys, maybe if you have anything which would tolerate a higher temperature like hypancistrus maybe?

Good luck and if you make a cooling system it'd be interesting to see a picture of it.

In case you have an external filter, you could put the pot into a fridge. That is, buy a fridge for it. Obviouslym, this would need some adjustments - how cold should the fridge be, would it help to have a coil of tube for the water to flow through, and so on.


It might be a lot more effective than an airco cooling the whole room

or you could make things better for you and the fish, you can pick up a room a/c for 100.00 here, not sure where you live

Hi,

I think in the long run it would be the best to have a room with A/C just for them, but I don’t have that option because of the space in our apartment. When I got it I was single and didn’t anticipated taking in my in-laws, too long of a story. We are looking into houses so I can have a room only for my tanks and my computer.

I also saw on youtube a guy that did used fridge to cool the water. He drilled two holes on one side of the fridge and ran a coil inside and it worked for him. It could be consider.

I finally heard from the guy that keeps the axolotls. He explained me that he repurposed a system he uses to cool his computer cpu. Is a water cooling system using a fan, a radiator and a chip called a “peltier device”. This chip once you supply it with electricity cools one side and heat the other. It cools to freezing leves. On the computer you cool the cpu and then run water tru a water block on the heating side pumping the water to a radiator to dissipate the heat. On his axolotl tank he uses it inverted, he places the cool side of the chip to the water block and pump water from the tank to the water block, cooling it and then back to the tank. A heat sink and a fan is placed on the heating side to dissipate the heat. He told me he uses a dual peltier system.

I found it on ebay and for the looks of it is not hard to do or expensive also it looks like a fun project maybe I’ll ty it. II’ll let you all know what I end-up doing.


Thanks for all for your comments and ideas.

Raamses

Reindas wrote: ↑03 Jul 2019, 03:42 Is a water cooling system using a fan, a radiator and a chip called a “peltier device”. This chip once you supply it with electricity cools one side and heat the other. It cools to freezing leves. On the computer you cool the cpu and then run water tru a water block on the heating side pumping the water to a radiator to dissipate the heat. On his axolotl tank he uses it inverted, he places the cool side of the chip to the water block and pump water from the tank to the water block, cooling it and then back to the tank. A heat sink and a fan is placed on the heating side to dissipate the heat. He told me he uses a dual peltier system.

Do keep us updated. I've looked into using Peltier heat pumps for several tasks like this but never actually done it, so I'll be interested in how it turns out for you.

the down side is that they are not very practical for large tanks or ones that require large "pull downs". most peltier coolers are used in camping coolers for example and even then are of limited capacity. they are sold for use in aquariums but small tanks with not much of a heat load.
if you had a computer chip with say 95 watts of cooling it would translate to about 340.00 btus, far too small for a decent sized tank. you could use multiple units as they are not very expensive but you would need a lot of them cheaper to buy a chiller and locate it in another room or in a basement. i ran into a similar problem and when we had a ductless system put in i had a 6000 btu unit put in the basement, it keeps the basement pretty cool and about 1500 gallons of tanks water never go over 78. once again the downside is that if the tanks were at 82 it might take 12 hours or more to get them down to 78. it's less stressful for the fish to never get warm in the first place and i've never tried to put ice cubes or an ice pack in a tank i would think the shock of swimming into maybe 45 or 55 degree water would be pretty stressful

I agree, it may not optimal for large tanks but this a 20 gallon tank is not tiny also isn't a large tank. I think it might work just to keep the temperature around 78 to 80 if I use two in tandem, but not 89.6 that was the max it got and this a no, no. Unless you keep desert pupfish. For the amount of tanks you have definitely using an A/C to cool the while room is the best option.

I already ordered the part, I'll let you know how it works for me.

Raamses.

While tiny is, obvioously, in the eye of the beholder, such a tanklet will heat very rapidly.

So, while discussing summer heat, one may call anything less than 100 or 500 liters tiny. Without any ill intent. I tink 20 US gallons is some 75 liters

As a student I had a 50 l tank, and a few above 300. All my friends prefered the smallest one. I did not, however.

Yes you are right. The less amount of water, the faster it will loose or gain heat and that’s a problem I’ll have to take care once I see how the peltier it works here.

I have a a 55g tank (210L) as a community tank but I have already decided to make the main tank for my cats and it’s location keep the temp more stable. I just need to find a good home for some fishes that won’t do good on a smaller tanks.

You know this is going to sound stupid, but I did’t realize I could do just that. My wife told me this today, as long I didn’t touch her neons.


I’ll keep you up yo date with my “Experiment”.

Raamses

The meantime I’ll try te peiltier aproach to the problem.

Weil have not received all the parts so i’m still waiting. This is how I keep the temperature down.

Hi,
I have 10 gallon tank in my garage that has the same problem. I bought a clip on fan... clipped to the side of the tank so it blows air across the tank long ways. Temp. stays @ 78. Only problem is that you lose a lot of water thru evaporation. But the temp stays low.

Gracias Jose,

That would help. Do you have the tank without the lid all the time in order to work? Because I have a cory that fancy himself to be an olympic jumper and surfaces more that all the others. Once I placed a breeder tank inside the corys tank to have guppy give birth and it jumped inside twice, even before I placed the guppy. I don’t know if it was exploring, likes to fly or what, but that fish is in that tank!

Regards.