Fish Soup?

[martiniduck]

I have a ten gallon tank that is temporarally holding some guppies right now. The heater in their is a small automatic heater for a 10 gallon and has no adjustment. The thermostat should turn on only if the temp drops below 78 deg. The temp in my house is 78 deg. The tank came with a hood with 2 incandescent bulbs. I was doing a water change and looked at the temp and noticed it was 90 deg. in the tank. I am suspecting the hood/lights are causing the excess heat. Will this temp. be harmfull for the fish. Should add cool water? or will that cause shock to the fish? I have turned off the light on the tank. I don't want to cook them.

Also anyone with livebearers, I have noticed that males likes to nip at the anal fins of the female fish. Is this a cortship ritual? or are they waiting for a fry to come out for lunch? I have been set up for a couple of months and all three of my female livebearers have given birth. I have a female dalmation molly, a female black molly, and a sunburst platty. I have a male sailfin molly and a male swordtail. Those are in my 29 gallon tank. In my 10 gallon I notcied one of my female guppies has a black spot near her anal fin, I have been told this is a sign of pregnacy, and the male guppies keep nipping at her anal fin.

 

[mgamer20o0]

unplug the heater and turn the lights off. if there is a lit take it off and put a fan over it. let it slowly come down you dont want to shock the fish.

first thing i would do is run out and get some cfl bulbs they run cooler then normal bulbs so it shouldnt heat the tank much. once it cools down and you put the heater back on keep a eye on it. that might be the cause its hard to tell.

 

[martiniduck]

Thanks as usual your experience is appreciated.

 

[black hills tj]

I would place the heater in a bucket of water and let it run, then check the temperature. Sounds like the heater is stuck on. The incandescent bulbs definitely aren't helping your temperature issues though.

 

[martiniduck]

Cool, I will do that. No pun intended.

 

[bs6749]

Incandescent bulbs can heat a tank by themselves, especially if you have the water so high that there is little evaporation. I used to have incandescent bulbs on my 10g shrimp tank but they can raise the temp from 74 to over 88 in a matter of hours. Next time this happens I'd do all of the above in addition to changing our 10% of the water with cooler water to bring the temp down 5-6 degrees. Also floating ice cubes in teh tank can bring the temp down at a safe pace.

 

[Barnature]

My male Fancy Guppies also nip at anal fins but not of the female fancy guppies because I only have three males, but at the Blue Flame Tetras. This is kinda wierd I mean, they are different species! I know, I should have bought some female Fancy Guppies but I didn't because they are not as pretty as the males. Do you think that I've space im my tank for some female Fancy Gups? If so, how many? ( The list of fish that inhabit my tank is listed below/signature.)

 

[Fromthelbc]

i have like 15-25 endlers live bearers guppies(not including about 10-15 fry), 2 sword tails, 1 lonely lonely neon tetra, 1 peppered cory, 2 ghost shrimp, 8-10 snails. i think you can fit some more in there.