Tips and Tricks to COOL a tank during HOT SUMMER Power outages w/o a chiller.

[Reefahholic]

One of the hardest situations to deal with in a summer power outage is manage temp. It’s been a HOT summer for everybody. Also, in the winter it’s really difficult to maintain heat. In the last big freeze here in Houston several people did not have enough heater power to sustain their systems. Heaters also draw a lot of wattage.

If anybody has some good tips or tricks please post up.

I have a Generator, but no Chiller. Some for sure don’t have a generator so it would be helpful if anybody knows any good tricks to keep a tank cool.

If you do have a Generator and no Chiller you can run a large fan over the surface of the tank and freeze water bottles. I thought about freezing 1/G milk jugs. I think I did that last year. Not sure how long that would last, but it may buy you some time.

 

[o2manyfish]

The fans over the tanks only work well in low humidity locations - With high humidity the air movement doesn't wick the heat out of the water.

I live in Los Angeles and we get up to 118 deg. I have a 1500g system of which 750g is outside in the direct sunlight. I run no chiller and am able to keep system temps under 81 up to 105 degrees using just fans over the tanks. When it gets over 105 I have a sunshade that automatically opens to cover the outdoor frag tanks (2 180g frag tanks). Without the sun hitting the frag tanks directly even with the air temp up to 118, with low humidity the fans keeps the system temp in check.

As far as doing this without power - We put in a whole house dual fuel generator several years back after a mid summer power failure wiped out a bunch of fish. Surprisingly it was the fish inside the display tank that perished. When the power went out during normal daytime hours the fish freaked because the lights were off schedule and buried themselves in the rock and corals and suffocated.

The fish in the outdoor frag tanks, even though their water temp almost hit 90 has zero losses because the fish were used to the sun being up during the day and kept active swimming around the tank.

With 90deg tank water we loss about 20 out of 500 corals outside.

With over 100 fish dying in a stagnant 400g tank in the house, (we were on vacation at the time), when the house sitter came home they only managed to fish out about 15 out of 100 deceased fish. The ammonia shot up in the system. We didn't lose any of the corals in the 400g display tank (probably 300pcs) but we did wipe out our issue with AEFW. The ammonia knocked them out.

Dave B