Towards the end of my MH cycle, the tank will get up to about 83.5, and with just the T5’s or the moon lights its around 80.7. Am I running to warm? I am also running glass lids, so I may try removing them to shave a degree. Any ideas?
When I get the sump up and running, that should drop some temp right? The added water not under the lights should definitely cool things down.
Steve
Im not sure if adding the sump will effect your temp noticeably or not. I wouldnt think so, but you never know. The cheapest and most effective thing you can do is put a fan on the same timer as your MH’s. Thats what i did and it worked like a charm. My temps never go above 82 with 768 watts of lighting. However, a fan wont work if you dont run your house AC in the summer.
Any pictures of your fan setup? I’m curious as to how to rig it up. I’m running a 75g display.
I also have a 75g DT. Here is an old pic, i dont have time to take a current one. You can see the fan on the left hand side of the refugium. Its a cheap $10 fan i got at lowes, its really nice becuase its probably 8" in daiameter but only about 2" thick. Its very light, i have it tywrapped to the shelf above it. Its unplugged right now but i run it in the summer on the MH timer.
Forgive me when I tell you I have NO idea what a lot of that stuff does :D. My tank has been up and running since the first week of September and I’m coming right from Freshwater. Looks like a very expansive setup tho! All your bases covered.
my thoughts are that 83 is indeed too hot. 80 is about the max I like to see. under 84 you will probably not see any death, but it doesnt give you much room for error. above 84 you start gettng into the kill zone. when your lights go off you are porbably dropping your temp down quite a bit, these swings in temp are also a bad thing for your inhabitants
IMHO you need to ditch the glass cover. your lighting looses intensity from hitting the watter surface, hitting hte glass top can drastically cut your PAR, especially if you get any salt buildup on it. as you are seeing it also drastically reduces heat reduction
adding a sump will drop your temperature, but probably not why you think- when water goes over your overflows it also entrains some air. this air cools the over flow wwater and increases evaporation when it hits your sump( ie cools it down)…
the goal in this hobby (again IMHO) is to keep all of your parameters stable and cloe to natural values. removing hte glass should help that goal a bit. adding a sump/fuge has numerous benefits including better water chemistry controll
Cheers
dont worry about not knowing what most of it does, it will come in time :BEER
on the other hand ther are some components that you should have or begin reaserching if you havent already, namely:
an RODI unit. if you are trying to keep SPS (hard corals, and I assume you are since you have MHs) you need one of these for sure for better water quality
Skimmers. I used to run my tank w/o a skimmer, and although I still think a holistic approach to tank husbandry is best, having a skimmer should be a part of the mix
Auto top off. once you get that glass top off and a fan in your canopy, your evaporartion rate is going to increase. addign a DIY auto top off with a aqualifter will make your life much easier ( and again keep things more stable)
a fuge/sump. as mentioned they have huge benefits. I will personally never try to keep a reef without one.
PH probe- a new addition to my tank, I have been amazed how much my PH swings. I highly reccomend them to everyone now…
optional stuff that I see:
Ca reactor. I would really like to give one of these a try in the future, but untill then Kalk works too.
Nitrogen reactor. DOnt know much about this one- Logans daddy, how do you like yours? has it helped your tank??
my thoughts are that 83 is indeed too hot. 80 is about the max I like to see. under 84 you will probably not see any death, but it doesnt give you much room for error. above 84 you start gettng into the kill zone. when your lights go off you are porbably dropping your temp down quite a bit, these swings in temp are also a bad thing for your inhabitantsIMHO you need to ditch the glass cover. your lighting looses intensity from hitting the watter surface, hitting hte glass top can drastically cut your PAR, especially if you get any salt buildup on it. as you are seeing it also drastically reduces heat reduction
People will chime in with different thoughts about temperature range, but i could not agree more with what Eric says. I think he is dead on with every point he made, especially about maitaining a safe margin of error for your temperature.
Eric - I love my denitrator. I really belive that they will catch on and be a must-have piece of equipment for any reef setup. Im at the point now where i feed my fish twice a day most days and my corals every day just to have some nitrates for my sofites. It seems like no matter how heavy i feed i cant get my nitartes above 1-2ppm. I also do a 15% waterchange every week religiously as well but i know a large part of my sucess is due to the denitrator. They are not a subsitute for good husbandry, but if your a fish lover and you want to push your bioload and keep challenging hard corals, i think its a must have. I also think its a must have for large FOWLR systems with messy eaters.
Agree with everyone above. 83+ is to high. I generally shoot to keep my temp between 78 and 80 this gives me a little room for error, tanks will be safe between 76-82.
Taking the lid off will add significantly to keeping your temp by allowing more evaporation. Running a fan across the surface will help more.
+1 i usta keep a lid on my tank and it would get way up there it might have been 84? then i took the lid off and i got better lighting and the temp went down. im soure a fan will help. where can i get some from?
nope, had no idea. i wonder if they were doing that when i bought it?
Yup, I have a little turnover package to give to Icy when we can next meet. no problem. I feel the more people taking an active interest in the club is a good thing. lets spread it around and share the load while pollinating more new ideas. It’s a good thing for the club.
Usually takes a temp of about 86*F for corals to start bleaching, but sharp swings can cause problems as well. I aim for 81-82 this time of year. If we lose power temps will drop. In the summer I try for a lower range of 80-81 incase the power goes out and temps start raising.
My tanks stay with in a degree or two night and day, but are all open top.(that is unless I accidently turn off a surge strip that has lights and heaters plugged into it:-( )
Its always surprising to me to see the responses to questions like this. When ever any other water parameter question is asked the replies are usually in-line with natural sea water values but when temp questions are asked the replies are to keep temps at values that are lower then found in nature and and to keep any temp fluctuations to a minimum or even static.
Why would we want temp to be any different then what the animals would find in nature and have evolved to over thousands of years?
Here’s a few quotes from this thread on reef keeping myths
The ideal temp for reef tanks is about 77-80
The worldwide average for coral reefs is a wintertime low of 77 to a summertime high of 86. The overall yearly average is 82. The average temp in the coral triangle where reef diversity is highest (and the majority of the livestock in the hobby is collected) is around 82-83 depending on the source. The thermal optimum, which is the temperature where a species grows best, has been tested for a handful of corals and for almost all species falls between 82-84.
Cooler temperatures are better because they give you more margin of error in case of an emergency
The thresholds for thermal damage in corals are set by acclimatization. The rule of thumb is 2-4 deg F above the normal seasonal maximum temperature. Whether your tank normally maxes out at 78 or 86, the corals will still only handle prolonged exposure to about 2-4 degrees above that.
Sometimes oxygenation of the water is cited as contributing to this effect too. While this is somewhat true, the effect is very minor. Increasing the temperature from 78 to 86 only reduces the oxygen saturation point by 7%. That still leaves you at about 300% of the safe level of oxygen. The temperature effect on metabolic demand for oxygen does not follow a clean curve in the sense that you can say higher temperatures demand more oxygen as people often insist. Again, this has to do with acclimatization and can get somewhat complicated.
The temperature on reefs is stable
Not by a long shot. A typical reef varies at least 3-8 degrees per day with some varying as much as 15. Because these were only measured over fairly coarse time periods, it’s likely that short-period changes that occurred quickly were missed. These are not slow changes occurring as the sun heats the water either. In fact it has been noted that the minute-to-minute variation is frequently as much as half of the yearly variation. The origin of these fluctuations are shifting currents, tides, and internal waves. As a result, variation actually increases with depth, contrary to what most hobbyists might imagine.
Stable temperatures are essential for healthy corals and fish
This one seems to have originated with studies done in temperate freshwater fish that showed increases in disease when they were exposed to rapidly fluctuating temperatures. The same has not been demonstrated for tropical marine fish, much less for corals. Given the unstable nature of wild reefs, you would not expect this to be true for reef organisms. In fact, it has been noted that larger fluctuations help protect corals from temperature stress.
Heres another thread with a link to a study of water temps on the Palauan reef
Water Temperatures on the Palauan Reef Tract
And another one about Temp fluctuations
What happens in our tanks is that we have been told that temps need to be lower then found in nature and stable so our corals become used to these artificially low and stable temps. Then when the temp accidentally raises above this artificial high point the corals cant handle it but this same coral in the wild would have no problem with it.
I allow the temps to swing all over the place on our tank. At night in the winter our tanks will drop down to 78 or 79f and during the day up to about 83 to 84f. And in the summer i turn the heater down some so the lows are about 77 and the highs up to 85f.
This is healthier and more natural for the corals and fish and makes them more resistant to extremes. A friend of mine who allows his system to swing like this also, this past summer had his tank climb to 89f because of a stuck heater and nothing was affected. But i see all the time people who run chillers and keep there temps pegged at 80f have a malfunction of some kind and the temp raises 2* and crash the tank.
Now you cant go and make these changes over night. It takes many months of 1* changes to heater and chiller setting but IMO its worth it, and you can sell that chiller and save all that electricity, have better growth and healthier corals.
Very valid points. I stand corrected. I must agree temp fluctuation to a certain point is beneficial for the reasons stated above, I can’t say I am comfortable with the idea of allowing my temps to swing betweeen 78-86 in a given day, but apparently there is still need for research and experimentation.
Thanks for sharing, will give me something to research further today.
True Jon, but these guys are collected on the bottom, and from what I’ve read generally fairly deep down where the water is significantly cooler. Not saying you cant keep them, just that I dont know either way.
interesting food for thought…
From personal experience I would agree that large temp swings may not cause much damage as I noted a range of about 76-84 when I had a MH over my 20L.
the ideal temp part of 82-84 is interesting and probably worth investigating. I may experiment with this in the future…
my biggest concern here is water chemistry though. although in nature there may be a large range of acceptable temperatures, you also have an essentially infiinte nutrient sink to keep natural parameters in check. the home reef its quite different, Temperature swings can have a dramatic affect on numerous concentrations. I would be more worried about those than the temperature itself. since temperature is a relatively easy parameter to controll when compared to the wide variety of water chemistry issues, I would still think it advisable to keep it tightly controlled…
What do you guys think?
+1 for Chris_Barb
I have done a fair amount of research on this, and I know from my personal experience diving in the Carribean that temps can range drastically within seconds on a reef. My tank generally ranges between 78-86 depending on the time of day and time of year. Our tanks have gotten up to 92 one day last August when the AC unit broke, and we saw no losses. I directly attribute this to having that swing daily in the temperature, because I have heard about whole tanks dying when they reached 82 because they had been maintained for years at exactly 77.
As far as water quality, the only factor that temperature should have any significant impact on is the concentration of Ionized to UnIonized ammonia in the system. I can get out the book later to figure out exactly what the difference is, but as long as you have sufficient LR to handle the normal ammonia loads, there should be no problems.
Huh, thats pretty neat. It sure beats how I start a siphon to do a water change (aka saltwater roulette)