I could just cry....

[JumboAg99]

I moved a couple of months ago and in the new house my tank gets some late afternoon sun through a solar shade and some heat film. Its a 90G will a custom canopy extension to get the metal Halides farther up from the tank. It ran around 82degrees at my old house... In this one, its been slowly creeping up to cooking. I bought an extra clip on fan for the sump, I tweaked the light schedules, still slowly climbing as the temperatures outside rise (living room gets up to upper 70's even with the AC running full blast during the hottest part of the day.

I finally decided I needed to bite the bullet and buy a chiller to save my poor fish and corals.. Went all out, got an Arctica 1/4HP unit (a bit more than I need for the 90, but want to upgrade to a larger tank eventually so planned ahead... Monday, I turned off the MH lights and left them off because tank is still getting warmer..... today the chiller arrived.

Plug the chiller in fired it up... 77.8 degrees.. Um.... .what the ... Thermometer with probe sitting in tank showing a whopping 86..... Need a third opinion.. dig around till I finally find an extra thermometer, it reads 78, just like the chiller.

The freaking thermometer I was basing everything off of is bad... I don't know whether to scream, kick myself, or cry....

I broke one of the first rules of fish keeping: never ever trust one measurement of ANYTHING in a tank if it seems even remotely weird.... (In my defense, with it slowly rising over the course of a month+, it (at the time) made perfect sense.)

Guess I didn't need to spend that $$ after all... crud....

Oh well, at least now I don't ever have to worry about temp and can make sure the tank doesn't fluctuate up and down... sigh....

Chiller IS nice an quiet....

 

[melev]

I'm so glad this thread didn't end up badly. The title was enough to think your tank cooked.

And I agree with you completely. Always run a comparison with a separate test just in case.

 

[Servo]

well look on the bright side (no pun intended) You can always add more lighting and lower the halides to the water for increased growth.

I thought that I was going to read that the probe came out of the water and was reading the ambient temperature of the water.

 

[v320]

@Marc wrote:

I thought the same thing... glad to hear everything turned out ok... !

While reading the post, I was going to recommend a solar shield install on your windows...
they are placed on the outside of your widows to decrease the temp in the house... they work great (they are avail in different densities).

After I installed them on my windows, there was a noticeable decrease in temp, and the AC was not working as hard.
8)

 

[casey]

sounds like a quality problem to me , (as in what a good problem to have) servo is right ! now you can change back all those things you had to compromise on for temp reasons ( like quiter fans, more light intensity, ) I know what you mean about having a chiller you never use right now my chiller does not come on unless i am testing it or a fan malfunctions or something. Casey

 

[Wes]

Glad everything is alright. It is interesting that you posted this b/c this just happened on a buddies tank. It was actually making him avoid MH all together, then he got a controller and was like, WTF! lol...