Cooling Tank Water During The Summer
 

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:

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.

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.