Temperature

[manny]

What temperature does everybody keep their tanks at? Mine stays at 80 and goes to about 82 when lights are on with ac at 70. This an ok range to be at?

[longhorn_20m]

Good question. Mine is around 78-79 without lights on and generally stays around 80 with lights on, sometimes up too 82. I generally leave my fan on during the day just to circulate air in my room to keep it cool. I think anything around 84 or higher begins to get deadly, but I'm not totally sure, hopefully someone will ping in with an absolute answer.

[beareef19]

My tank is usually around 82-84, 120 gal reef. Josh frag I got at meeting is doing good Glad to hear you are alright. :D

[Tim Marvin]

I run mine from 80-82. I have had some of the tanks run down to 70 and as high as 90 with no ill effects. The thing to remember is not to change the temp fast. Some people will freak out when they come home and see the tank at 85, so they dump a bunch of ice in the sump! They lose stuff from the quick temp change, not the temp itself. I had a tank run 86-90 for 2 days, I put a couple fans on it and the temp was down in the high 70's within 24 hours. This tank housed brains, acropora, mushrooms, polyps, and some leathers. If I remember correctly I only lost one acropora. My favorite one, but still only one. Some stoneys in Australia are actually exposed, out of the water, for parts of the day. You know the scorching sun must bake them in the 90's. I have a picture of this some place, maybe one of my dive magazines. I'll try to find it.

[reefer74]

80-82 is desireable from what I have experienced, and from what I have read. I have had reeftanks up at this temperature constantly, with excellent results. I agree with tim, when he said that most of the damage occurs when you do something drastic to change the situation.



Johnny G.

[captexas]

Consistancy is most important. You don't want your livestock to go through large temperature swings every day. This can cause too much stress on them. If your tank runs warm due to lighting, set a heater to keep the temp from dropping too much overnight when the lights are off and the tank tends to cool down. Most livestock can adapt to the temp as long as it is consistant. Of course you don't want to have fish and corals that are from deeper or cold water parts of the ocean in a tank running 85 degrees!

[phage]

My 120 would never break 80 unless I had a heater on it. Open top, 2 HQI 250w bulbs stays pretty cool. So mine stays around 79-81 with the heater keeping it stable.

[Tim Marvin]

79-81 sounds perfect. IMO

[matt]

I read somewhere that the average reef temp worldwide is 81.7. So certainly anything wthin a few degrees of that is fine. But, we often keep animals together that live in different temp environments. Examples are blood shrimp and catalina gobies, which typically come from cooler waters or deeper water. Also, it appears that optimum coral temps are fairly close to their upper limit for survival; so in our small systems, temp fluctuations up can really be dangerous. My previous tank stayed at 84 most of the time; great coral and fish growth, but also more algae.

[Jimnorris]

My runs from 77 at night to 83 during the day. If anybody knows what do you think the temp. is at low tide when arcos are exposed without water? I wonder does this help them grow or color up in any what?
Jim

[::pete::]

Ever since adding my MH's my temp sometimes rises to 85. I have seen nothing but good things since. When y'all swim in a pool there are cold and hot spots as well as the lake and ocean which Im sure change constantly. If in a hot climate and the sun beats constantly and at low tide as mentioned I see it as a lil kid pool left at the beach and that water is warm and all living things go on. If they dont well, they were not ment too. I think IMO sometimes we might try to over correct when there really isnt a problem. Kind of goes to the old saying ... if it aint broke dont fix it!

[kaiser]

Well I read all of the replys and now I am thinking my tank me be too cold. It was running in the 80 to 82 range so I put a little 6" fan on the wall above the tank and it now is running in the 74 to 76 range. The fan is running on the lowest speed. 55g Tank w/ 220W PC lights and no top.

[Tim Marvin]

Yeh, take off the fan. You were fine at 80-82.

[Richard]

I think in one of Borneman's books it lists the min/max and average temp for various reefs. The overall average temp for all reefs is 82. Some other authors say temp HAS to be mid 70's, if that were true there would be alot less reef tanks in south texas. My tank runs around 84 in during the summer, right now it's running around 82. As others have said, just try to keep the temp from bouncing all over the place.

[captexas]

Kaiser -
A six inch fan drops your tank temp by 6 degrees? And you have it on the lowest speed? Wow, must be one hell of a fan! I need to get a couple for my house so I don't have to run my ac! LOL :-o

[kaiser]

I was suprised myself as to how much the temp went down. I guess the proper term for this is evaporative cooling. I have to top of the tank daily about 1.5g. here is a picture of the tank.
BTW I bought the fan at big lots for $6.99

[::pete::]

Nice tank ... and pic Your tank looks so clean

[manny]

Thanks for all the input guys. I was wonderin about temp cause on marinedepot and liveaquaria recommended tank conditions are from 72 to 78 degrees. If everybody is runnin in the low 80's though, guess I'm alright where I am. :P These kind of things in this hobby are when it's good to have info from other people that have experience and not just goin by what a website or book says.

[brewercm]

I was in the same boat. I put on the clip on fan from Wal-Mart and my tank went from 82 to 77. I ended up just removing the fan and letting the water stay there since it didn't seem that high. My evaporation rate went through the roof when the fan was on, about 1.5 to 2 gallons a day on my 75.