gypskye190
Aquarium Advice Newbie
Hi all, this is my first post in a fish/aquarium community. I never thought I would get attached to fish, but in the last 5 months I have become obsessed with my glofish tetras and have been doing tons of googling, reading, calling for advice from the experts at my local aquarium and (sadly) lots of attempts at rescuing (I think I may now have more bottles of fish medications/chemicals than human ones....).
I live in a basement apartment, and even though the weather isn't cold now, landlords turn on the AC for themselves when it gets warm- and so in the summer it can actually get colder in the basement than it does in the winter. I am struggling to keep the temperature of my tank up. Right now (thanks to a recent broken outlet which killed the heater entirely without me noticing and resulted in a fish apocalypse) I restarted from scratch. I have my 5 gallon tank with 3 glofish, and my sister is giving me her old 10 gallon tank in a couple of weeks, so the plan is to upgrade to the 10 gallon and then add 2-3 more fish. Right now (with
Hydor 25W Submersible Glass Aquarium Heater, as well as 2 x 10 W small Aqueon heaters, I can just about maintain 72 without the top on the tank, and if it's perfectly on ( so only openings are ones cut for feeding/wires) then I can get the temperature up to about 80. I know 72 is the lower end of the appropriate range for glofish, and I need to make sure I can reliably get the temp up to 86 if I have another ICH outbreak (not being able to do that was a problem with the apocalypse I mentioned), and given the 10 gallon tank I'll have won't have a lid, I'm trying to figure out aesthetically pleasing ways to insulate the tank. The total of 45 W worth of heaters I have in the 5-gallon should be more than enough to get it to whatever temperature I need, but as I said that's only possible when I have the lid fitted perfectly on. So I imagine this may be a problem with the 10-gallon tank with no lid. I've read about styrofoam insulation or surrounding with blankets during a power outage- but 1) Given that I expect at least a couple power outages from spring/summer storms, where do you get styrofoam perfectly cut for the tank? 2) What is a good every day way to prevent heat loss in tanks so that you can still see the fish? 3) What wattage heater would you recommend for the 10-gallon tank in a basement apartment that runs cold? Keep in mind I dont just want to be able to get it to ~76, I want the option to get to 86 if I need to.
So excited to be part of this community! Looking forward to learning a lot!
I live in a basement apartment, and even though the weather isn't cold now, landlords turn on the AC for themselves when it gets warm- and so in the summer it can actually get colder in the basement than it does in the winter. I am struggling to keep the temperature of my tank up. Right now (thanks to a recent broken outlet which killed the heater entirely without me noticing and resulted in a fish apocalypse) I restarted from scratch. I have my 5 gallon tank with 3 glofish, and my sister is giving me her old 10 gallon tank in a couple of weeks, so the plan is to upgrade to the 10 gallon and then add 2-3 more fish. Right now (with
Hydor 25W Submersible Glass Aquarium Heater, as well as 2 x 10 W small Aqueon heaters, I can just about maintain 72 without the top on the tank, and if it's perfectly on ( so only openings are ones cut for feeding/wires) then I can get the temperature up to about 80. I know 72 is the lower end of the appropriate range for glofish, and I need to make sure I can reliably get the temp up to 86 if I have another ICH outbreak (not being able to do that was a problem with the apocalypse I mentioned), and given the 10 gallon tank I'll have won't have a lid, I'm trying to figure out aesthetically pleasing ways to insulate the tank. The total of 45 W worth of heaters I have in the 5-gallon should be more than enough to get it to whatever temperature I need, but as I said that's only possible when I have the lid fitted perfectly on. So I imagine this may be a problem with the 10-gallon tank with no lid. I've read about styrofoam insulation or surrounding with blankets during a power outage- but 1) Given that I expect at least a couple power outages from spring/summer storms, where do you get styrofoam perfectly cut for the tank? 2) What is a good every day way to prevent heat loss in tanks so that you can still see the fish? 3) What wattage heater would you recommend for the 10-gallon tank in a basement apartment that runs cold? Keep in mind I dont just want to be able to get it to ~76, I want the option to get to 86 if I need to.
So excited to be part of this community! Looking forward to learning a lot!