New Aquarium

Hidom 300w, and not initially as it was set to 24º

I then turned it down as I was getting concerned about the heat, and there was no change. Yesterday, last night and all of today it has been completely unplugged which infers to me that it isn't a problem with the heater......... well, it surely can't be as it isn't plugged in. The lights are LED, and whilst there is a bit of warmth to them, it is not a lot - I can happily hold my hand on one and barely feel the heat. I am at a loss as to where the heat is coming from, and why the tank doesn't seem to be cooling down despite not being heated at all.

 

I will change the heater, when I have some cash, but right now that is a no. I do have an Inkbird unit which has a really accurate probe on it and that will switch the mains on and off appropriately - it will also cut off above the set parameters and even alarm if things get silly either way, so it is my fall back.

I also have a Killawatt type unit which I can set to tell me when there is more than a certain current draw - so that would tell me what is switching on and off.

I just don't get how the tank can hold that sort of temperature in a room that isn't heated yet (not that it is cold), it doesn't really get direct sunlight (maybe a wee bit in the evening if we don't close the curtains, but that is for minutes only), and without heat of any kind for well over 24hrs.

I have verified the temp with three separate thermometers to confirm, and in fairness even when the heater was plugged in, I hadn't seen it on.

 

Hi @ricky101

The Inkbird is not yet set up, but that is one of my next moves, as it is remarkably accurate in its control.

The lights have been on for around 8 hours a day - outside those hours it is ambient light and darkness. There is no provision for cooling fan in the hood that I can see - - - however, it is not beyond my wit (once I am physically fit to do so) that I could knock a hole in the lid and rig up some sort of fan.

Canister filter is a 35w fellow, with a 9w UV light - the top of it does feel a wee bit warm to the touch, but I seriously doubt that it is sufficient to keep 300+ litres of water that warm? I will get the meter on it, and then other tank attachments and see if any of them are consuming excessively.

I have had the lid open, and it dropped things by about half of a degree, but I am reluctant to leave it up overnight in case I have any that are a bit too enthusiastic with their jumping.

As for the room's ambient temperature, yes that is an issue - firstly because we have a lot of insulation so the house holds its heat, and secondly because I do have to close doors and windows as sitting in a breeze or draught causes me a remarkable amount of pain. Having said that, the ambient temperature is starting to drop, which may help a bit.

 

I will take a look shortly to see if I can turn the UV off for now, and the cupboard door is open; I also have the tank lid open at the moment, and the ambient room temperature has dropped a bit overnight.

Sadly, I don't have any sort of fan available, be it mains or DC and I am not currently in a position to be buying anything like that -- budget has now gone for this, so I am going to have to cope with what I have to hand, The Inkbird can activate cooling, but of course only if there is cooling available to switch on.

Fish seem happy - all very quiet and still half asleep this morning, and we left it until around 1130 to put the lights on, after which they all woke up and are bombing around the tank having fun. The Gouramis seem to really love the air stones, and keep swimming low into the bubble stream and then sailing up in the bubbles, and going round for another shot.

Oh, and I think we have another pregnant Gourami....

EDIT - that should have read another pregnant Guppy!!

 

Sorry Mike, I don't know how I missed your post - the tank has its own specific stand, which seemed to be pretty heavy going by the grunts from the guys lifting it in through our back door.

Tank temp is slowly dropping - down to 26º today, so I will leave it another day or two, monitoring closely, and then plug the heater back in. My Killawatt meter is dead, so I will need to get my tools out at some point and see what has gone wrong (probably an electrolytic failed), so I may still have to dig out the Inkbird

 

Everything is looking pretty peachy - had some problems with the guppy grass getting itself sort of stuck to the filter intake, so we had to have the lid off the other day and shuffle a few bits about. We cleaned the external filter on the same day (filthy), which also meant we changed some of the water - we will do more of a water change this weekend.

No losses of fish so far, and all the tests are quite stable - the pH has dropped a bit to 6.8, and the temperature is down to 25º - that was purely a combination of room warmth, the lights and the lid - we now leave the lid open all the time when we are in the room.

We also have babies - five tiny wee guppy babies, and so far they are surviving quite well. I have a pic of a couple which I will post back later