Getting Started

[BSNative]

Getting Started,

Hi all I have had tropical fish for 8 years and just gave them all away because I would like to get into native fish. I figure that keeping my tank cold is going to be my biggest problem? I have two filtration units in a 250L tank. Any advice on the cooling process and any other tips in general would be much apreciated

Thanks

[livingart]

hi BSNative, welcome to the forum

you can add your location in user control panel, then profile at the top of the page

lots of threads on here and stella is our resident expert

enjoy your time here

[BigBossPants]

I'm also in Mt Maunganui. I found that over summer cooling was an issue, I had a large fan over the tank, an airstone and spray bar for extra surface agitation, and was putting 1-2L ice cubes in twice a day. This kept my 60L tank under 20*C...

A fair bit of fluffing around, but it seemed to do the trick. Not sure if a larger tank will be easier or harder to cool.

Jas uses a chiller for his natives, perhaps he has some pointers? You could come along to the local fish club meetings

[Stella]

resident expert here :oops:

I use fans on my tanks for evaporative cooling, and 3lt bottles of ice when things get really bad. Aeration definitely helps, as the bad effect of high temperatures is lower dissolved oxygen. Aerations doesn't directly add oxygen, but exposes more water to the surface for gas exchange.

I find the fans work better on tanks with a large surface area. Small tanks heat up too fast from the warm room for the evaporative cooling to have much effect.

Any pumps in a tank (including external filtration) and light add heat. Have the lights on a timer so they are only on when they are needed helps, as does raising them up a bit so the fans can blow away the heat.

With native tanks it is important to think carefully about siting the tank. Cooling the tank starts with having it in a cool room, having a big enough tank to keep the temps more stable, then insulating the hell out of it THEN cooling the water itself.

Doing the other steps first means less effort into the cooling, which is the difficult bit.

What sort of native tank are you wanting to do? :bounce:

I strongly recommend trawling through the archives here. This site has the best information so far available (my book will be published *sometime*!) on keeping natives. More specific questions are easier to answer.