Cooling Tank Water During The Summer

[rdebonis]

I have 3 tanks of Long Finned White Cloud Mountain minnows and the temperature in the tanks gets as high as 84 F during the summer. These fish prefer temperatures between 65F and 74F. I know I am stressing them but there doesn't appear to be any problem with them because they are active and eating........ However, I can't get them to breed at these high temperatures. The tanks are 1-30 gallon and 1-20 gallon.

Does anyone have any suggestions other than a chiller. I do have air conditioning in the room, but I keep the tank lights on 10 to 12 hours per day for the plants and the tank temperatures get rather high. I was thinking of reversing the daylight hours by putting the lights on in these tanks from 10PM to 10 AM, but I am not sure if it will affect the fish. :thinking:

[alazandv]

You can place fans blowing across the surface of the water. This will lower your water temperature by about 2-4 degrees. This process is called evaporative cooling. Remember the word evaporative as it does exactly that, this metod works great but you'll need to top off water more often. While not a big problem in freshwater setups, saltwater tanks (depending on the size) will require you to stay on top of topping off as not to affect water salinity.

[stevem]

That's fine when you have 1 or 2 tanks, but what happens when you have 10 or 20 in a fish room.
I have an air conditioner in the room on a timer, and this works fine. The biggest draw back is the electric cost.
You will have to play around with the ac settings to get the right temperture.