Lowering temperature?

[erik]

How do you all go about lowering the temperature in your tank? Mine is sitting at about 70degrees (Farenheit, of course

) I've been dropping cubes of ice in to try to lower the temperature, but it's not doing much good.

 

[erik]

Well, after prowling around the site I found a few answers and I'm going to try some of them out, but if anyone has found any other cool tricks that work (pun intended), let me know!

 

[jennifer]

What is the temperature in the room, and is there any way to lower it? There are a bunch of little tricks that will bring the temp down a degree or two, but the only ways to significantly lower it are to cool the room, move the tank to a cooler room, or install a chiller (which costs mega-bucks).

 

[erik]

Temperature of the room can't be lowered, and the rest of the house is just as hot. Such is the pleasure of coming home to my parent's house for a month.

 

[erik]

Down to about 67 degrees. I'm trading out bottles of frozen water every hour or so. It's lowering the temperature slow enough that I don't think it's coming as much of a shock to the newt. He actually seems a bit more active now than he did previously.

 

[erik]

I just read about a fairly simple trick in a fish magazine.One that never occured to me, depsite alot of brainstorming on the idea of cheap ways to keep salamanders cool. I get alot more benefit from fish magazines that I do from the reptile publications...

Most of us have heard about the DIY chiller, where you place a canister filter in a 'mini' refrigerator or run the plumblng throught the frige. This article also had the idea to put your air pumps in the frige on the coldest setting or in the freezer area. The idea is you will be pumping ice cold air into the water via airstone. It would require drilling 2 small holes into the side wall of the frige to run the airline and electrical chord out.

The main problem I see is that a refrigerator does put off quite a bit of heat and the unit would have to be situated close to your aquariums. Also not sure how much this method could drop the temp.But it is a new idea to me and I plan to try it out sometime down the road. Might work better as supplemental chilling in an already cool room. Insulating the aquarium on 3 sides would help keep the tank cool.Check this months Aquarium Fish magazine (jan 03) for the article.

 

[erik]

I broke down and on top of the water bottles, I closed the vent in my room and closed the door. My only other option was to take the aquarium out to the garage, but it sometimes falls below freezing here and we don't need that.

Closing the vent lowered the temp in the room A LOT and lowered the temp of the tank by about 3 degrees. Finally at about 62.

 

[jennifer]

Erik B., good work! Erik K., I like the idea of putting air pumps into a freezer. Since my air pumps are in the closet of another room (to cut noise), I could run a small fridge in there and it wouldn't heat up the newt room. Thanks for sharing this!

 

[aaron]

My worry about putting airpumps in a freeze would be that the rubber diaphragms would get stiff and stop working or crack.

~Aaron

 

[erik]

Yeah. Someone will have to give this a try. I worried about the pump functioning ok at freezing temps too. Unfortunately I don't have my mini fridge anymore. However I do have 4 tanks set up outside here in NC and despite the nightime temps being below freezing most nights, the pumps(generic at best) keep working. Of course it does get warmer during the day.

 

[edward]

Hi All,
Has anyone given any thought that this will also only be usable in a fridge (or freezer) that has a bad seal on it? Otherwise the pumps will pump the air out and make a partial vacumn (good if you are trying to freeze dry something. This will cause the pumps to work harder shortening thier life.
Ed

 

[erik]

Good call. Of course, if you're drilling holes to make room for the hoses, you could always just drill an extra hole to regulate pressure, or just open the door occasionally.

Either way, I live in a dorm room and don't have the extra fridge to spare. I need to come up with new solutions soon because this swapping out of frozen water bottles is going to get on my nerves real quick.

 

[erik]

I forgot to mention that there is a small whole drilled on the opposite side for air exchange.Not real efficient, I know.It was just an idea.

 

[edward]

Hi Erik,
I wasn't trying to put you down and the idea is worth trying.A variation on this that may be of more use for the animals would be to have an empty space in the soil that is cooled as opposed to the air. This way the animals could go down into the substrate to get cooler (as in nature) and it would not affect the humidity as much as pumping cold dry air into the tank might.
This process may work better with the water chilled in the fridge version of this as opposed to the air chilled version. One of the problems is that many people try to use too small a fridge to cool the water/air and it doesn't work well.
By the way Erik was this from FAMA or one of the other fish magazines. It looks like an iea out of FAMA's For What its Worth column.
Ed

 

[han]

what about putting the waterfilter in a cold environment, a fridge or even a freezer, adjust it just above freezing-point. it'll take some time but eventually will cooldown the water in the tank. i guess?

 

[edward]

Hi Han,
That is what some fish keepers do to keep the temps for getting too high. The limitation to this is that unless you have a large fridge these tend to only drop the water temp four or five degrees normally in smaller tanks (less in larger tanks). This will chill down the water but it doesn't help terrestrial animals.
Ed