# It's getting hot.



## devonb (Jan 5, 2015)

Do you use chillers to keep your tanks cool? Or do you have other methods you use?


----------



## datfish (Sep 7, 2012)

If your tank is large enough, something you can do is take a small container and fill it with water and ice and setup a pump in the container. Then run hose from the pump into your tank and loop it so that the outflow leads back into the small container.


----------



## devonb (Jan 5, 2015)

datfish said:


> If your tank is large enough, something you can do is take a small container and fill it with water and ice and setup a pump in the container. Then run hose from the pump into your tank and loop it so that the outflow leads back into the small container.


Dang - that's pretty interesting. I feel like the ice would melt really quick though and then it'd be just warm water.


----------



## SeaHorse_Fanatic (Apr 22, 2010)

If you do this, use ice BLOCKS and NOT ice cubes. Just freeze large metal or plastic containers of water and use those instead of the cube trays. Last way longer.

My solution is to live in a ground floor suite (upstairs is way too hot), and have my front and back doors open from sunset till 3 AM or later (depends on how late I can stay up) in order to "trap" as much cold air as possible in my place to keep the tanks & myself at a nice, cool temperature. For instance, my car thermometer was reading 29 C all afternoon when I was out driving with the AC blasting, but my tanks never went above 23-24 C all day. I have a fan blowing in the room but if it gets really warm, I set up small clipon fans over the sumps to create more evaporative cooling effect. If it gets really hot in here (usually needs to be in the mid-30s outside), then I set up my 12000 btu portable AC unit to keep my tanks and myself comfortable. My family is in Malaysia right now where the average temp year-round is 32-33 C and its the hottest time of year right now. Glad I don't live there and try to keep sw tanks from overheating.

Anthony


----------



## aQ.LED (Nov 13, 2012)

Anthony probly said it the best as there is really no better option than choose to the right place to put your tank.
If your tank is set and moving it is not a option. You can try the few options I use below which might help.
1) I don't use ice cube and I don't dump ice directly into my tank. What I do is put few 1 L coke bottle in the freezer with water and chuck them in the tank. Don't expect this would drop your temp in tank by a lot especially if you run a high power MH or T5.
2) Eliminate as much "motor" type of equipment as possible. Such as power head, filter, skimmer. All these generate heat and in a large enough tank that runs 3 or 4 powerhead, they really build up heat fast. Replace them with 1 higher output to keep up with the water flow.
3)Reverse your light timer. If you are running MH/T5, reverse your timer. Let the light come up at night and turn off in the morning. This would balance the heat as usually night time is cooler.
4) change your lighting if it is running MH to LED.

Some of these solution cost money but the reason I give you those options is because what I lost during the summer out weight anything I list above. I am sure 25k in a single summer is enough to replace my tank with the full LED set up with chiller. 

Hope this make sense to you


----------

