Water Temps

[super]

I am having an issue with water temps in my 90g. I'm in the process of trying to determine the root cause.

The room thermostat is set at 76 and the room temp fluctuates from 75-77 depending the time of day and if the halides have been on but the tank is at 83-84 degrees 24/7.

I have unplugged heaters, powerheads, skimmer and UV light one by one over the past few days trying to make sure it wasn't one of those acting up and causing an issue. I just recently switched from 2 mag pumps to one larger external and was hoping that would make a differnce but it made no difference one way or another.


I'm wondering what the thermostat for everyone else's fish room is set at?

 

[skriz]

How are you measuring tank temp?

 

[super]

Coralife Digital Thermometer

 

[shanepike]

I'm not sure this is your problem, but I've never had anything but trouble with Coralife products.

 

[super]

ShanePike;861266 wrote: I'm not sure this is your problem, but I've never had anything but trouble with Coralife products.

Well I'm not above trying a different temperature taking device...

 

[rdnelson]

I would keep an old fashioned thermometer in the sump to use as a means to check a digital.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[super]

rdnelson99;861272 wrote: I would keep an old fashioned thermometer in the sump to use as a means to check a digital.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That plan is already in the works

I also forgot to mention that I have a fan blowing across the sump in attempts to cool things off. Seems to help some but not enough

 

[super]

2ruble;861279 wrote: I don't know if there is a difference... but I had a fan on my old DT... cheap fan across the water surface and it dropped a couple degrees in a couple hours

That's what I'm doing now since I just have eggcrate covering the top, I just hate to have to leave it that way since I don't have a canopy or anyway to hide the fan.

 

[jef4y]

Yep, get a second thermometer. The coralife ones are not the most reliable.

The external pump should HELP your tank stay cooler. MH obviously heat it up, but overall you shouldn't be as hot as you are.

Any chance your heater is stuck on?

 

[super]

JeF4y;861284 wrote: Yep, get a second thermometer. The coralife ones are not the most reliable.

The external pump should HELP your tank stay cooler. MH obviously heat it up, but overall you shouldn't be as hot as you are.

Any chance your heater is stuck on?

Well I left the heater unplugged for 24 hours and it made no difference... I did the same thing with the other pumps and power heads as well just to see.

If I was 100% sure the issue would be resolved by removing the MH's then I would move towards resolving the issue... but having the tank only drop 1 degree or so with the MH's off for 12+ hours, I can't imagine removing them totally would magically solve the issue. If that makes sense

 

[skriz]

Super;861264 wrote: Coralife Digital Thermometer

There's your problem. Coralife products in general are garbage. But that particular one is far worse; calling it garbage would be an insult to garbage.

Check temp with an old school thermometer and see what it shows and go from there.

 

[mcphock]

I feel ya, my friend. Painful lesson: When things don't make sense, check the checker

 

[freezerrat]

I never thought about the accuracy of the Coralife thermometers but I can say its the old saying about getting what you pay for in this case. I had one a couple years back, battery died.......
A new battery was more that a whole new unit!!

 

[jimsreeftank]

my tank runs 76-78.5

 

[seanb600]

I was having a problem like that i found it was my main return pump

 

[super]

beccaf91;861359 wrote: How long are you running your halides for? I have 2 400 watt halides on my 110 and only run mine 3hrs in the morning and three hours in the evening and temp never goes over 79

I run them for like 6 hours straight. Do you have T5s or something else running the rest of the time?

 

[picoreefguy]

i know its probably just the faulty thermometer but if its not try taking the eggcrete off the top and see if that allows more air to move across the water surface. i would think that its blocking at least some of the air unless you have the fan pointed straight down

 

[super]

2ruble;861459 wrote: You get a plain jane drop in thermo yet?

I did... Looks like the coralife was part of the problem if not the whole problem. It appears to have been about 2-3 degrees above true temp. Back to square one with troubleshooting now that I have something accurate to test with.

I used a fan directly on top of the tank to cool it down, so currently its 78 degrees. We'll see if it holds true until the lights come on around 3pm and what happens from there.

Edit:

Picoreefguy;861474 wrote: i know its probably just the faulty thermometer but if its not try taking the eggcrete off the top and see if that allows more air to move across the water surface. i would think that its blocking at least some of the air unless you have the fan pointed straight down

In cooling it down I had a fan pointed straight down and although ugly, it did the job. I lost half a gallon of water in a few hours, so evaporation was definitely happening! I would love to remove the egg crate all together, the suicidal diamond goby would ultimately not be happy with an open top :roll:

 

[super]

Well apparently there is something else besides the coralife at fault. The lights are not yet on but the temp is slowly rising yet again. :doh:

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I will now start the process of removing possible suspects and go from there. I hope its just the heater as its the cheapest thing to replace

 

[seanb600]

if you have submersible pumps reach down and see if they are warm or in my case hot to the touch.Like way hotter then the water I had 1 year old 350 gph rio killing my tank. put a new pump in and problem solved:yay: