dorcy

My A/C in my apartment building is broken right now, and there is a heat wave in my city, which is causing my apartment is heat up a lot - which in turn is causing my tank to heat up a lot, it's about 28C right now. (82F)

I've done a 25% water change with cooler water, but that only brought it down to 27C. I'm worried if the A/C isn't fixed soon and the heat wave continues the temp will get too high for my fish. Anyone know of any tricks to cool the water short of constantly doing water changes? I don't want to shock my fish with tonnes of cold water for obviously reasons, and I have to work, so I can't always be doing water changes. I was thinking of throwing some ice cubes in a couple ziploc bags and floating them in the tank for a while. That way the untreated water in the cubes would stay separate from the tank water, but it would still cool the water.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

MrsM3197

Dorcy, the ziplock baggie is a great idea. As a matter of fact I saw the same posted a while back in another "emergency" thread. Just don't cool it too much too quickly, I think that could be very bad. Another idea would be to drop frozen bottles of water into the tank.

Fishies-for-me

I have also heard that you can blow a fan across the tank and that will help cool it down to...good luck.

mrsmuffin

I actually keep an ice cube tray in my freezer with ice made from treated water. Sometimes no matter how hard my AC runs a tank will get too warm, and I just toss a couple of cubes in. The fish love exploring them!

Fishies-for-me

I have never done that...but my ? is won't that chill the fish and cause ICH??

mrsmuffin

I only put a 2-3 cubes at a time in my 30 gal tank. It doesn't drop the temp very fast, but it makes me feel better! I haven't had any problems, but I don't do it every day either. My temp has still never dropped below 79-80 in these summer months.

pepetj

Hi Dorcy: I guess it depends on the type of fish you keep. For coldwater 28C might be too much, a cooling fan (or several) should do the work.
However, for tropical fish, even 30C is tolerable; I would worry more about depleted levels of dissolved O2, which I guess could be address by providing more vigourus agitation (e.g. adding another HOB, and to complement, large airstones).
I live in the Caribbean, all my fishes are either tropical or from template habitats, I use no heater at all, and the water in my tanks range mostly from 27 to 29C, all year round.
Keep us posted. Hope your A/C is fixed soon.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

COBettaCouple

Ice cubes in ziploc bags is what we use for that problem.