Stabilizing temperature

Max93 · Jul 31, 2022

Earlier I was joking that the most overlooked issue I had was the temperature in my tank.

So I got an InkBird, and the controller says the temperature was at 75(attached image). But all of a sudden in a literal 15 minutes the temperature spiked up to 85.

I immediately turned off my halides, and the heaters for the InkBird to start the process of testing where the malfunction is but yet… the temperature has only dropped to 82.9.
The house temperature is 71 degrees F, and the night time temp is 68 F.

I checked all the pumps in the sump, some are pretty warm but nothing out of the ordinary. I also added a regular thermometer and it matches the inkbird temperature exact.

my old heaters where reading 86(both of them, heck I think this was the problem). I had set them to 78 and inkbird says temp is 75.

I put the probes from my old heaters back in the tank and they both say 86 so I can assume the old heaters run 3 degrees too high. The inkbird and thermostat say 82.9.

any ideas? Turning off the halides dropped the temp down from 85 to 82.9. But I want to have a baseline of 77-78… I live in the mountains so it’s not really hot here, besides my temp in the house with central AC says 71 all day except at night 68.

any ideas? All fish and corals look great (I only have our acan and a few zoas) but I’m getting ready to try SPS again and would like to stabilize my temp. Any thoughts on what this is?

laverda · Jul 31, 2022

It would take a lot of heat to raise the tank temp that much in 15 minutes. If you want your tank bas temp to be 77-78 set you one of your heaters to 78 and set the second to 77. This way neither shoukd be cycling constantly. If the first is not enough or fails the second one will come on Then test what they are actually doing and adjust as needed.

Pico bam · Jul 31, 2022

you have your heaters plugged into the ink bird and it reached 85? do you have the ink bird setup correctly? Faulty ink bird? Is all the heat coming from the halides? So many questions lol

Reef. · Aug 1, 2022

Where do you have the probes?

Lbrdsoxfan · Aug 1, 2022

Reef. said:
Where do you have the probes?

This.

Max93 · Aug 1, 2022

Reef. said:
Where do you have the probes?

I have the probes sitting in the sump, next to the pH probe right above the pump for my UV sterilizer. They are seated firmly on the same probe holder as the pH probe so they can’t move around.

attached picture of what happened at midnight.

to clarify, I have the probes here because this is where a continuous fresh flow of water comes in from the overflow.

to be even more clear, the heaters are UNPLUGGED right now, but the probes are on. Heaters are unplugged because I am checking to see if the heaters themselves are faulty. But the reading below suggests to me that maybe the probes are faulty? I’m checking the manual thermometer now to see if it matches.

Reef. · Aug 1, 2022

Max93 said:
I have the probes sitting in the sump, next to the pH probe right above the pump for my UV sterilizer. They are seated firmly on the same probe holder as the pH probe so they can’t move around.

attached picture of what happened at midnight.

to clarify, I have the probes here because this is where a continuous fresh flow of water comes in from the overflow.

to be even more clear, the heaters are UNPLUGGED right now, but the probes are on. Heaters are unplugged because I am checking to see if the heaters themselves are faulty. But the reading below suggests to me that maybe the probes are faulty? I’m checking the manual thermometer now to see if it matches.

Think you have faulty probes or heaters, more likely the probes as a drop in temp would be gradual not as sharp as your graph is showing.

n2585722 · Aug 1, 2022

I don't have Halides I just have LED's lighting my tank and I have to use evaporative cooling to keep it at 78. The house is at 76, but if I turn off the cooling it will get into the 80's. So it is likely to get there without the heaters plugged in with you lights and pumps running. Just remember as an example a 60w pump puts out a quite a bit of heat and it goes into the water. I only have two submersible pumps in my water one is drawing 40 watts and the other is drawing 72 watts. My heaters have not come on in months. The other two pumps are MP10's and I doubt that they are contributing much to the heat in the tank since the motors are outside the tank.