Water temp, what's yours?
- Thread starter gamedawg
- Start date
littleliza
Member
has anyone tried a Rena Basic heater? I was considering one for my jbj deluxe 12 gallon. Any other suggestions for a heater type? My temperature stays at 78 during the day, I just need something to make sure it keeps a constant temperature. I might bump the temp up to 80 or so, too.
chipmaker
Active Member
My 2 gal pico stays between 79/80.....My in process 16 gal AGA bowfront w/heater in fuge, has been keeping a constant79.5
[hr]
79.6 degree temp now for 3 days during my wet testing and tuneing....I have a 1x96 quad, over the tank, which has 2, 40mm cooling fans, and I also installed a wrap around hood to raise and suport light itself since the standoff legs for the coral life will not work on my bowfront, since it has to be a bit off the front corners due to a AC110 fuge and CSS65 protein skimmer. I installed 2 additional 40 mm fans in the once end of the wrap around light support (3" tall, made of acrylic on front and sides, open in the back)with one of them coming on when the 1x96 lightcomes on, and the other is switched independantly, but both are powered from a variablke output wal wart. I found through playing around with different speeds on the fans by varying the output of the wal wart, and running both together I can maintain a pretty consistent temperature....I had prevously had two different fans mounted of 40mm, which had a thickness of approx 7/16" and had many blades, but they did not supply sufficient flow at low speeds, and at high speed were extremely noisey.....I now have two 40mm fans with 5 blades on them, and they are 5/8" thick, move twice as much air at a lower speed and are super quiet......All fans are not created equal is another thing I found out.
[hr]
79.6 degree temp now for 3 days during my wet testing and tuneing....I have a 1x96 quad, over the tank, which has 2, 40mm cooling fans, and I also installed a wrap around hood to raise and suport light itself since the standoff legs for the coral life will not work on my bowfront, since it has to be a bit off the front corners due to a AC110 fuge and CSS65 protein skimmer. I installed 2 additional 40 mm fans in the once end of the wrap around light support (3" tall, made of acrylic on front and sides, open in the back)with one of them coming on when the 1x96 lightcomes on, and the other is switched independantly, but both are powered from a variablke output wal wart. I found through playing around with different speeds on the fans by varying the output of the wal wart, and running both together I can maintain a pretty consistent temperature....I had prevously had two different fans mounted of 40mm, which had a thickness of approx 7/16" and had many blades, but they did not supply sufficient flow at low speeds, and at high speed were extremely noisey.....I now have two 40mm fans with 5 blades on them, and they are 5/8" thick, move twice as much air at a lower speed and are super quiet......All fans are not created equal is another thing I found out.
merredeth
Active Member
Originally Posted by nanoreef
Heres a story to remember "for me anyway
"
so at this point i turned off all of the lights and in about an hour the temp was back to 79 degrees
oh yah and my tank happens to me a 10g nanoreef :scared:
I had a problem with the temp rising just after I started this hobby and read to take a couple of water bottles filled with water keep them in the freezer. If you get an unexpected temperature rise, then you can put them in the tank to float.
Right after I got into the hobby and was trying to regulate a bad heater I ended up with my temp way too high. I took a couple of water bottles and floated them (labels were off and so was all the glue prior to freezing them) and added a 4 watt fan to blow over my water and turned out my lights.
In a couple hours, my water was back to normal and nothing suffered any damage.
I also read you could keep ice cubes and float them in ziploc bags. Because I use R/O water, I didn't like that idea though, for fear the ziploc bag wasn't all the way sealed or there was a small hole in the bag.
Denise M.
Heres a story to remember "for me anyway
so at this point i turned off all of the lights and in about an hour the temp was back to 79 degrees
oh yah and my tank happens to me a 10g nanoreef :scared:
I had a problem with the temp rising just after I started this hobby and read to take a couple of water bottles filled with water keep them in the freezer. If you get an unexpected temperature rise, then you can put them in the tank to float.
Right after I got into the hobby and was trying to regulate a bad heater I ended up with my temp way too high. I took a couple of water bottles and floated them (labels were off and so was all the glue prior to freezing them) and added a 4 watt fan to blow over my water and turned out my lights.
In a couple hours, my water was back to normal and nothing suffered any damage.
I also read you could keep ice cubes and float them in ziploc bags. Because I use R/O water, I didn't like that idea though, for fear the ziploc bag wasn't all the way sealed or there was a small hole in the bag.
Denise M.
1journeyman
Active Member
Originally Posted by ophiura
.......
IMO, under 78 degrees is getting too cool...natural reef temperatures are mostly 80 and above. There is an excellent article by Ron Shimek on natural reef temperatures and salinity out there. Can probably Google it.
Hmm.. Does that include Pacific reefs? I don't have my log book here, but I'm thinking when I went diving on the Great Barrier Reef the temp. was 75-76. (And they were having a mild winter so that couldn't have dropped the water temp)
.......
IMO, under 78 degrees is getting too cool...natural reef temperatures are mostly 80 and above. There is an excellent article by Ron Shimek on natural reef temperatures and salinity out there. Can probably Google it.
Hmm.. Does that include Pacific reefs? I don't have my log book here, but I'm thinking when I went diving on the Great Barrier Reef the temp. was 75-76. (And they were having a mild winter so that couldn't have dropped the water temp)
philgmiami
Member
80 to 96.7
ophiura
Active Member
There are seasonal and geographic variations of course, but on average, the temps are above 80 and for where most of our animals come from.
Ron Shimek has written quite a lot on it and has reference to many articles on his website at:
http://www.rshimek.com/reef/tempsal.htm
You can go also to a site like this:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/oisst/index.html
And if needed a basic temp conversion:
http://www.eskimo.com/~jet/javascript/convert.html
The Great Barrier Reef is actually relatively south of where most of the animals in this hobby come from - the Indo Pacific reefs. Most of the Indonesian Reefs are pretty constantly around 82-83 degrees most of the year.
Ron Shimek has written quite a lot on it and has reference to many articles on his website at:
http://www.rshimek.com/reef/tempsal.htm
You can go also to a site like this:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/oisst/index.html
And if needed a basic temp conversion:
http://www.eskimo.com/~jet/javascript/convert.html
The Great Barrier Reef is actually relatively south of where most of the animals in this hobby come from - the Indo Pacific reefs. Most of the Indonesian Reefs are pretty constantly around 82-83 degrees most of the year.
diane4
Member
Ophiura, WOW, what a great and usefull reply post. I love it when people reply to posts with helpful info and links to save for future reference. Thank you. Absolutely Fish in Clifton NJ said they keep their reef tanks at 76-78 range. Their tanks looks great. I have mine about that also. But, I may raise my tank temp a degree or two.
Whats interesting though is that the websites that you provided say that the temp is for ocean surface. Most of the reef animals we keep live in fairly shallow waters, but doesn't the temp get cooler the further you go below the surface?
Whats interesting though is that the websites that you provided say that the temp is for ocean surface. Most of the reef animals we keep live in fairly shallow waters, but doesn't the temp get cooler the further you go below the surface?
ophiura
Active Member
The sea surface temperatures are for something like the top 100 - 300 feet or so which is where most of our animals are collected from. It is important, IMO, to keep tank temps around that from the area our animals come from. This is what they are best adapted for...lower temperatures - and certainly salinities, IMO, may be a stress on them.
1journeyman
Active Member
Thanks for the info Ophiura! Once again I bow to your wisdom
I checked my logs.. water was 75-76. Temp didn't change from surface to 60 feet (I was a newb and couldn't dive lower than that)
This brings up an interesting idea... should we allow our tanks to gradually dip and stay a few degrees lower during the winter?
Edit:
I just remembered too about studying the effects of temp. on metablosim of freshwater bass. The Large mouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) is found much larger in southern states (where the water is warmer), but they live much longer in northern states.
I checked my logs.. water was 75-76. Temp didn't change from surface to 60 feet (I was a newb and couldn't dive lower than that)
This brings up an interesting idea... should we allow our tanks to gradually dip and stay a few degrees lower during the winter?
Edit:
I just remembered too about studying the effects of temp. on metablosim of freshwater bass. The Large mouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) is found much larger in southern states (where the water is warmer), but they live much longer in northern states.
bang guy
Moderator
I allow the temp of my main system to dip in the winter only because it saves money on heating all that water. I'd prefer to keep the temp higher.
If you have animals from a specific biotope then by all means, you should also follow the temperature closely. But like Ophiura stated, most of our animals have the greatest density of populations where the temps are between 80F & 85F.
If you have animals from a specific biotope then by all means, you should also follow the temperature closely. But like Ophiura stated, most of our animals have the greatest density of populations where the temps are between 80F & 85F.
ophiura
Active Member
Well, you could argue that yes, you could drop temperature down a bit...but then lighting should change too. So people do, as Bang Guy mentioned, drop it down but primarily for economic reasons. The animals probably wouldn't be getting many "cues" from it without lighting and tides etc, etc. Wouldn't be bad though, so long as ice doesn't form on the surface
1journeyman
Active Member
Hmm... lights too, good point...
I may think about doing that too and see how it works out. Anyone know off hand a good webpage that shows sunrise and sunset each day? That would be a cool project... now that I've almost got all of my lights done and my refugium in place.
I may think about doing that too and see how it works out. Anyone know off hand a good webpage that shows sunrise and sunset each day? That would be a cool project... now that I've almost got all of my lights done and my refugium in place.