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Anonymous

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Instead of asking how you are going to beat the heat this summer, lets talk about ways you have tried to beat the heat in the past, but discarded for various reasons. Why did you decide to try a particular reef cooling method and why did you abandon it?


About the RDO Weekly Discussion:
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A

Anonymous

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Well for me I put my tanks on the first floor (no direct sunlight into the room) hence much cooler... but then again for that 3 days that'll be over 85 in san fran I'm not really concerned :)
 

trido

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I moved to Seattle. You would like it here :D

edit: Sorry, couldnt help it. I dont mean to derail this thread. I truely think this is a great topic. I guess you could count moving as a failed attemp as my tank shot to 84 the other day I didnt have my fans on.
 
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Anonymous

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I have tried fans, they worked the best, but in the spring and fall here the nights are cold and the days really hot so in order to make it consistant I had to make sure I had enough heaters running to combat the evaporation at night. Because I was running fans on my sump in an enclosed cabinet it made a moldy mess out of it.

I have also tried frozen bottles of water. I would only recommend this as a last ditch effort for short time periods. Its not very easy to keep a constant temp with bottles of ice.

Currently I am doing 2 things to battle heat.

I keep my central air on 74-75 degrees
I let the tank get to around 84 degrees without worrying about it


Last summer that worked great.
 

recoiljpr

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Maybe I am missing something here. It seems pretty much everyone around here is always concerned with heat. I live in Central Texas (Yesterday it was 98) and my tank never has problems with heat. We are over 90 degrees for at least half the year from late April till Mid September. My highest temp i've ever recorded in my tank was 83 degrees. (I do keep my central ac at 72 though). Or, do I not have issues because my tank is a 29 gallon, or because I have Power Compacts and no MH??
 
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Anonymous

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I use a 6-inch clip on fan in my hood controlled by a Ranco dual stage controller. The controller turns on a Won Titanium heater when the tank drops below 79 and the fan kicks on in thc canopy when the tnak goes above 80.

I do evaporate about 1.5-2 gallons a day on my 58G tank.

When the house temp goes above 80 degrees I do have to turn on the room air conditioner. Keeps me and the tank cool.
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Anonymous

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I turn on the light when I am home and during the night time to take advantage of the cooler air.
 
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Anonymous

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recoiljpr":nzyn4nkz said:
Maybe I am missing something here. It seems pretty much everyone around here is always concerned with heat. I live in Central Texas (Yesterday it was 98) and my tank never has problems with heat. We are over 90 degrees for at least half the year from late April till Mid September. My highest temp i've ever recorded in my tank was 83 degrees. (I do keep my central ac at 72 though). Or, do I not have issues because my tank is a 29 gallon, or because I have Power Compacts and no MH??

:D
Your tank never hits that 90 degrees because of the central AC. Many people don't have or run AC, so they have to deal with the ambient temp in the room with the tank being 90. Not having MH also helps.
 

bleedingthought

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Righty":226qddph said:
recoiljpr":226qddph said:
Maybe I am missing something here. It seems pretty much everyone around here is always concerned with heat. I live in Central Texas (Yesterday it was 98) and my tank never has problems with heat. We are over 90 degrees for at least half the year from late April till Mid September. My highest temp i've ever recorded in my tank was 83 degrees. (I do keep my central ac at 72 though). Or, do I not have issues because my tank is a 29 gallon, or because I have Power Compacts and no MH??

:D
Your tank never hits that 90 degrees because of the central AC. Many people don't have or run AC, so they have to deal with the ambient temp in the room with the tank being 90. Not having MH also helps.

Not running AC at home would be really bad down here in Georgia. Not only is it incredibly hot, it's also awfully humid. :x

My tank doesn't go past 80F anymore. But when I had the glass top and the lights on for 12 hours, it went up a little higher.
 

Lars

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Here in Chico it gets well over 100° during the summer :oops: . I keep the central A/C at 78° and a 6" fan in the hood runs when the lights are on, 9a-9p. The tank stays pretty constant at 80-84° and the inhabitants all do well in my 125. In the past we kept the A/C higher and I had much larget temp. swings which the corals did not like at all. The extra cost of A/C, I feel, offsets the cost and hassle of a chiller at this point.
 
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Anonymous

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Clip-on fans are great to bring the tank down 3 or 4 degrees. When the AC was down for a few weeks, I reversed the photoperiod like SE did, turning the lights on when the apartment had cooled down in the evening and turning them off when I was leaving for work in the morning.

I've also used frozen RO water to top off the tanks from time to time.
 

Jolieve

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Central air helps, but I have a large house, so it gets expensive to keep temps low in the tank with the central air system.

In addition to central air, to help save my budget, I have two four inch cooling fans in the canopy to keep my mh's from overheating the tank. I also have a clip fan on the back of the canopy that can blow over the top of the tank when I open the doors to the canopy. There's another clip fan over the sump.

I know.. it's fan crazy :)

J.
 
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Anonymous

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greenighs":34a9sf9v said:
I've also used frozen RO water to top off the tanks from time to time.


Genious! Great idea, those could be floated in the sump until they melt! I tried the frozen water jug method in the main tank once upon a time but found it didn't really do much but cause some nasty temp swings.
 
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Anonymous

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I use fans and run my lights later in the day (on at 4pm off at 10pm) when the house temp is not so hot. Worked well one tank, but on my 60 I had to not run one pump 24/7 and had to keep the stand open to get enough evap to keep it cool.
 

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