Lighting during a heat wave and no A/C

CharlieAsh · Sep 3, 2022

Hello! I am looking for some suggestions for the most effective way to light my tank during a SoCal heat wave.

I have a 120 gallon tank with an Odessea T5 -48" light system. Two of the lights are blue, two are white (forgive the lack of technical understanding on that, I inherited the tank and I am actively learning as I go). The lights come on slowly at 10am and the last of the lights turns off at roughly 11 pm.

I am concerned about the heat they are putting off because the tank is currently hitting about 86 degrees, and even before that my LFS suggested my lights should only be on for about 8 hours a day. The room the tank is in gets natural light (which has caused some algae issues recently) so I can't fully limit the time that light is getting in to the tank, but I would love to tackle what I can with the items I currently have.

Any help understanding this would be greatly appreciated.

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal · Sep 3, 2022

What kind of livestock do you have?

Running a fan over the tank surface will reduce the temperature somewhat.

CharlieAsh · Sep 3, 2022

Primarily fish, hermit crabs, snails and two mushroom coral who are hanging on through some pretty rough tank times.

Blue Tang, two Clowns, black damsel, blue damsel, bicolored blenny, mandarin goby, coral banded shrimp and a lone firefish

EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal · Sep 4, 2022

You said the room gets natural light... if the mushrooms are the only coral, you will be fine just not running the lights for a few days, or running them for just a few hours. I wouldn't recommend doing this for more than 3 days at a time, depending on how the mushrooms look during that time.

You could also try running the lights later in the evening when it is (hopefully) a little cooler in your house.

And I still recommend using a fan.

Jimbo327 · Sep 4, 2022

86 is pretty high temp. Direct a fan over the surface of the water, and it will cool it down by evaporating more. And you don't need that much time with lights on with only 2 mushrooms. You can cut the lights down below 8 hours easy.