Fish in the high desert?

[Evil Caesar]

Hello everyone First I want to thank everyone for all the tips and advice I picked up over the past year and a half of browsing this site. Only been in the hobby 1.5yrs but have successfully pulled off a heavy planted 30 gallon and simple 10 gallon and a 15 at my girls house lol. Love the hobby. So here is my question, I'm taking a job in the high altitude desert down by the Mexican border. Now I have spent years in different deserts and know they can easily reach 120-130 deg in areas. Now simply put, unless an AC unit in your house ran continuously all day, wouldn't the water become too hot for the fish? I noticed on my planted tank with HO lights the water got up to and past 85 degrees at points through out the summer (NJ). I can only imagine bad results. Is there ways to keep the water cool without cooling the whole house?
Maybe someone from AZ, NV or Death Valley wanna chime in? Thanks in advance everyone.

 

[BigJim]

Welcome to AA!

Check out chillers. They're small cooling units for your tank. I've seen a lot of reef guys use them, but there's no reason they couldn't work on a FW tank.

 

[Wy Renegade]

Indeed chillers work on freshwater as well as salt as BigJim said. In fact they are required if you want to keep true coldwater fish like trout. Unfortunately, they are pretty expensive.

 

[spoonman]

Another way is to have air movement over that top of the water. That has a natural cooling effect. I do that here in Vegas in the hottest parts of the summer. I just get a little clip-on fan and put it on the side of the tank and let it blow across the top of the water.

 

[zach_1_6]

my temp got dangerously hot and i just had a normal fan blowing on the tank all day and it droped the temp down nicely.

 

[adeebm]

I've heard of DIY chillers by running tubing through a walmart mini fridge Probably cheaper than a commercial chiller.

--Adeeb

 

[Deep Seven]

I've heard of DIY chillers by running tubing through a walmart mini fridge Probably cheaper than a commercial chiller.

--Adeeb

I've done the research into this and it won't work. Fridge and freezers are designed to be low load. They do a good job at keeping a small insulated space cold, but they are not meant to be run full time, and they are weak in overall heat removal. They can be effective if all you need is a small amount of cooling but they are extremely limited.

A DIY unit would most likely have to be from an air conditioner or dehumidifier. The cooling unit on those appliances are fairly powerful. To keep the tank 50 degrees colder then ambient temperature will require a lot of power.

If you insulated 2 or three sides of the tank it would help a lot. Acrylic is a better insulator then glass. If you build your own tank a plywood/acrylic tank would be a lot easier to cool. Fiberglassed plywood is a very good insulator compared to glass or acrylic. One or two sides made of acrylic for viewing and the rest plywood would reduce your cooling needs by a lot, allowing you to have a bigger tank or cheaper chiller or both.

 

[mgamer20o0]

most places there do run their AC 24/7 or it gets to miserable. it ends up taking less energy to to keep the house cool vs letting it heat up so hot during the day and then cool it down once you get back.

what you have to worry about more often is the tap water being too hot to wc unless you leave it around the house to cool down. a chiller is the only long term option if the room is too hot. there is short term things like ice. there are also some things you can do like using fans to help get the heat from the lights from raising the temps of the water too.

 

[Evil Caesar]

Thanks everyone. Gonna give it a shot and take my 30gal out there. I'm not going to have to worry about the heat since I will be arriving in southern AZ around late November. Will try the fan option first. Then most likely upgrade if it doesn't work. The thing about the AC, I will be working 12 hour shifts sometimes 18 in emergencies. So I would probably turn it down. When I use to live out in the Mojave Desert I left it on all the time. But the Army paid that bill. As for the water being to hot out of the faucet, I usually let the water sit for 24 hours in 5 gal buckets first. I think that helps reducing the chlorine in the water correct? Thanks everyone for the input, now I'm set on bringing my aquarium with me. I just wanted to throw a few pics in, everyone loves pics right! I know when you have a planted tank natural decor looks better. I'm a dork though and like my sunken ships lol

 

[adeebm]

Nice tank Letting water sit for 24hrs should allow the chlorine to gas off, but not chloramine. So if your tap has chloramines, you will still need a dechlorinator. I would use one anyway just to be safe.

--Adeeb

 

[johnarthur]

In a heat emergency, you can put in a sealed bag with ice cubes. You may also want to run the aquarium light only at night when the temperature goes down.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Or do what I do, keep some 2L pop bottle filled with water (leave 1-2" air) in the freezer and drop them in. Massive cooling capacity.

 

[johnarthur]

Great idea!

Don't know much about SW tanks. Freshwater is challenging enough.