brrrr...Chilly in AZ!

[jer0886]

Hello all,

Since the temperature has been dropping in AZ, the temp. in my fish tank has been going up and down...During the day, my tank gets up to 78 deg when the MH lights kick on, and at night, gets down to 71 deg...

Is this flux okay? I know anywhere between 70 - 80 is "normal."

A penny for your thoughts -

Jeremy

[mojodeli]

That's too large of a swing. Set your heaters at 78 and have the fans kick on the the lights come one.

My tank stays at 81. I'm running one 6" fan when the lights come on.

[tendar]

YOu should not have more than a max of 2 degrees flux in a 12 hour period. any more will to much stress on the corals fish and they will start dieing. YOur 78 is perfect but 70 is way to cold.
You should be running a heater that has 3x the watts of gallons to your tank size. So if your tank is 50 gall you should have a 150 watt heater.
Also us good heaters that are trusted like Ebo Jager.

[mx_tang]

Jeremy, I'm curiuous to hear where you heard that a 10° differential is considered normal? The coral reefs don't shift more than 10° per thousand or so years, just to put some perspective on the matter. Like Gregg said, that shift in temperature is liable to stress and kill your organisms in short order. I'd try to get a heater, at the very least, so that the temperature won't fall under a preset temperature (determined by you). I like to have my temperature set at ~80°. At night, it can fall down to 79°, but once it hits 78.9°, then the heaters kick on, which are on a controller.

If you want to get really fancy, you can use a chiller/heater combo with dual stage controller, etc, but most people can get by with some cooling fans and a heater or two. Generally, I like to use 3 or more heaters with the same wattage as the total volume of water in the tank for each heater. For example, on a 100g tank, I'd use 3 x 100w heaters. This way, if one heater breaks, sticks, or malfunctions, then the other two heaters can remain functional and save your tank from the next simulated ice age. You'll learn that relying solely on one one piece of equipment may result in disaster or failure sometime down the road.

[jer0886]

Sorry - I didn't hear that a flux between 70-80 was norm, just that having the temperature of the tank between 70-80 was norm. I picked up a 300W heater last night (Mike - got your advice of three heaters too late :)), so my tank is at a steady 77 deg. now.

Thanks reef-peeps!

[tendar]

Sounds good on the heater I am sure every will be much happier now.