the winter season is long over
I no longer have to worry about it my power goes out how I'm going to heat my
aquariums but now it's the summer time and with the summer comes another unique
challenge
as an Aquarius we have to deal with the summer heat and our aquariums
overheating
so in today's video I want to give you guys my top 10 tips on how to cool your
aquarium
during the summer months you'll also want to stick around to the end of the
video because i have a special guest that's going to share their tips as well
before we begin I just want to make something very clear given the sheer
fact that there are so many variables the different types of aquariums like
what size they are what they're made out of and what type of an aquarium it
actually is
some of these tips may or may not apply to your aquarium and or be as efficient
as you'd like them to be with that said I do urge you to try a few and see which
one works best for your situation in terms of cooling your aquarium down
so in no particular order let's start off with one that I've always
recommended for power outages for example and that is floating a frozen
water bottle in your aquarium by simply floating them in your aquarium and
hopefully having it near the output of a filter and allowing that water to be
circulated a little bit more evenly
this will effectively slowly cool down your tank now the bigger the bottle
the longer it will last I suggest always having an extra frozen one on standby in
the freezer so that you can rotate them as they thought out surface agitation
also plays a big role in your aquarium and it does a couple of things for you
obviously the number one thing that it does is increase the overall surface
area your aquarium actually has to offer
so by simply pointing the outputs of your filters up or even an airstone you
are effectively creating a lot of surface agitation that will aid in both
gasp exchange as well as heat exchange
now the gas exchange is important because as the temperature rises in your
tank
this will ensure that the co2 is gasthof a lot faster as well as the heat which
leads me into the next tip install a fan above your aquarium and ensure that it
blows across the surface of your tank
you'll have to take your lids off to get the full effect of this but for an
example as the hot air is rising the fan will remove that hot air from the top of
your tank allowing it to cool down faster
this will also cool down your lights but we'll get to that in a moment
speaking of fans this is a big one for me if you have a lot of aquariums in a
small room you'll want to have proper ventilation and circulation of the air
now not everybody can install an air exchanger in their house but something I
personally do is get a small fan
open up my window and suck the hot air out then have another oscillating fan
that continuously blows air back and forth in the room circulating it
this means that all of the hot air is search
related with in the room and then sucked out of the window that really cools the
room down so controlling the ambient room temperature is a huge one which
brings me to the next tip
however this is going to be a larger investment not only to your aquariums
but as well as your home
i highly suggest getting an air conditioner and installing it close to
your aquariums if you possibly can
it's pretty much that simple if you control the ambient room temperature
you'll be able to keep your aquarium is cooler and speaking of investments this
leads me to my next tip a commercial aquarium chiller
now these come in all sizes with the ability to cool down almost any size
aquarium ranging from hot several hundred dollars to several thousand now
obviously that would be a massive investment but depending on the type of
fish that you have or the aquarium that you already invested in this might be a
wise choice to go with with the mention of a commercial children this leads me
to a do-it-yourself chiller now showing you how to build one of those in the
past by simply taking a mini fridge some garden hose and an aquarium pump which
will effectively cool down your tank however that's really only going to be
efficient on smaller tanks
it's not going to work that well on larger tanks however recently I've seen
a lot of you sharing your do-it-yourself killers with me and I just want to say
good job
so with chillers in mind we're now into looking at treating the water directly
and that leads me to my next tip if you're aquariums get a little too high
why not do a water change with cooler water now i'm not talking a drastic
difference but a few degrees isn't going to hurt the fish and I can assure you
they're not going to mind an extra water change or two
this is something i personally do I like to drain the tank fifty percent and then
when i'm adding in New water i change it by about four degrees in such a large
volume of water is really only drops the overall water temperature by about a
couple of degrees but at times that's all I needed to do
obviously the more water you change and the colder the water is the more you'll
drop the temperature but if you change the temperature to drastically in too
soon you're going to shock the fish so be careful with that too on the note of
doing water changes with cooler water this leads me to my next tip installing
a drip system on your aquarium now a drip system is a continuous flow of cold
water to the tank and all of the dirtier warmer water will simply overflow into a
drink
now i'm going to cover in detail on how I
added a drip system to an established tank in a future video
with that said a drip system can effectively lower the waters temperature
as well and you can adjust it by simply increasing the flow
not only are you calling your aquarium but you don't have to do any water
changes either
so with all of these tips aside let's now look at the culprit that sometimes
leads to heating your aquariums that we rarely take a look at the actual
equipment that runs your aquarium
I'm talking the pumps the heaters and lights three things that could
potentially be a source of heat
let's start with the pumps if you're running a sump like mine a lot of the
times we use an internal pump
sometimes these internal pumps can put off quite a bit of heat
so you might want to consider switching out the type of pump for an external
pump and one that stays relatively cool
however that's a pretty big change in investment but it's certainly something
to consider
now a lot of you that might have canister filters or hang on the back
filter system that you don't really have anything to worry about there
the next piece of equipment we commonly take for granted is our heaters and in
the summertime
unlike any other time of the year it's probably best to make sure that they are
calibrated to the temperature you set if you don't know how to calibrate your
heater's make sure that you contact the manufacturer or potentially just check
out their website and see if they have instructions on how to do it there
as for lighting we all know that some White's can get pretty hot
you might not think yours is actually contributing to raising the temperature
of your tank though
so my suggestion would be to simply put your hand under the light and see if you
feel any warmth at all if you do
well that warmth has to go somewhere if you feel any war my suggestion would be
to simply find a way to raise your lighting higher up off the tank
you can do this by simply putting a couple two by fours or blocks on each
side it's not that complicated and this will allow the heat to not go directly
down into the tank
it will also give you a bit of more light coverage with the light now
elevated install one of those fans we talked about earlier and had it flow
right across the top of the tank and take all of that hot air from the light
as well as the tank and blow it away elsewhere
and while we're talking about the light if you can't elevate them or below the
heat away or eliminate them as a heat source my suggestion would simply adjust
your photo . meaning that you
the lights on less or not at all obviously you're going to have to decide
on this whether you have a plan to tank or reef tank or if you actually need the
lights on there if your lights are only there for viewing purposes
my suggestion would to turn them on only through peak viewing hours
ok so one last tip and this is something a lot of people just simply do not
consider now we talked about at the first of the video though and that is
the material your tank is actually made out of whether it's glass acrylic or
plywood
now there's something called heat transmission now this roughly translates
into how quickly a material loses heat or heat can pass through it now when it
comes to glass acrylic comply with aquariums glass has a higher heat
transmission than acrylic acrylic has a higher tricky transmission than plywood
and what does really breaks down to is they're insulated properties and when
you're trying to hold in heat and or cold
the more insulation you have the longer can hold it in
so for looking to heat our aquariums a glass aquarium will lose the heat faster
than acrylic and acrylic will lose the heat faster than plywood and the same
goes for chillin it or cooling your tank down
what I'm getting at is that if things get bad you're going to have to insulate
the tank
this will make sure that your cooling efforts become far more efficient
my suggestion would be simply to pick up some quarter inch styrofoam and wrap the
entire perimeter of the tank
not the top though now I know this is going to block off the whole tank and
it's going to look ugly but drastic times call for drastic measures
and of course in the evening when it cools down you could take the insulation
off and view your fish
ok so that was my top 10 tips on how to cool your aquarium now for a bonus tip
for my friend Rachel
thanks Joey hello hello DIY fish my basement fishroom has a unique that I
don't have any windows to run exhaust fans when temperatures get really hot
like they have
so what I've started doing to control the key is attaching utility fans to the
PVC that runs my central loop around fish room this not only blows cooler air
across the surface of the times but also moves away any hot air that's
accumulating at the ceiling line now it's a really important in my fish room
that I have these plugs into the boxes run around my room that go to my central
timer
this means as soon as my lights get going in the morning
the fans kick on hopefully preventing that accumulation of hot air and more
consistent temperature throughout the days and nights
hope that helps hey thanks a lot rachel is really great to get an additional tip
now folks I actually convinced Rachel to do an extra video on top of her regular
video schedule and put it out tomorrow
she's also going to cover how she cools her aquariums and her fish room if
you're not familiar with who Rachel o'leary is she is the owner of
invertebrates by miss jinkx and runs her own youtube channel as well
however i like to call her the queen of nano with that said she does also have
some monster fish of her own
while you're over there checking out other videos make sure that you
subscribe as well and support when I like to describe as the best up and
coming new aquarium channel that I've seen in years
anyways hope that you guys enjoyed today's video if not join me next week
and I'll have something new for you
I no longer have to worry about power and some of it