Temp Fluctuations

Hi everyone,

I am noticing that my temperature from morning to night is fluctuating by an astronomical 8 degrees!  With these cold mornings and my central heating off at night, I wake up to a tank that is showing 72 degrees.  At night with the central heating on at around 10 pm, it shows near 80 degrees.  I've got to get this under control.  I know that during the summer, I had the same problem.  The temp would fluctuate in the heat about 6 degrees if I remeber correctly.  However, I thought the problem would correct itself during the colder weather as each time the temp dropped, the heater would kick on. 

Up to this point, nothing is keeling over or doing poorly.  However, my coral growth is relatively stagnant.  Everyone is hanging in there but nothing is going crazy on growth. 

At this time, I am using one heater in the far corner of my tank.  I bought the tank used about 1 year ago, so I don't know the brand/wattage/etc.  It is about 2' tall.  Is the simple solution just to add a second heater?  Or is there some other solution?   Keep in mind I don't want to keep the heat on all day, nor would I keep the AC on all day if we were in the middle of summer.

FYI, the tank is a 46 bow front with a false perc, royal gramma, pink spotted watchman goby, firefish goby, and a coral beauty.  Corals are all small to medium frags of softies, lps, and two SPS I am experimenting with.   I also have 2 banded seastars, a cuke, various snails/crabs, and a cleaner shrimp. 

Thanks,

Brandon

My tank temps are 74 in the morning and 79 as the lights go off right now, but in the summer it only varies by 2 degrees or so.

From the looks of it, sounds like none of you are too concerned about the fluctuations.  That is puzzling, as we are constantly striving for stability in pH, Alk, etc.  What gives?

I'm with Brad. I try for a 3 degree swing or less. If it were me I would consider adding another heater to keep it warmer at night and shorten the lighting schedule so it doesn't heat up too much during the day (since the water will be warmer in the morning and heat up more during the day.)

ACIII controls mine. AC shuts off the heater at 78. Heater is set for 79 just incase there is a problem with the ACIII.

I have the aquaJR and a 3 degree temp swing, as far as the titanium heaters go stay away from "won Brothers" brand wont last very long.




Edited by bbeck4x4 - January 15 2007 at 9:51pm

I have no "data" to persuade one way or the other, but I doubt the temperature swings as quickly in the wild as it does in some of our tanks.  For that reason alone, I try to keep my swing to a minimum.  My tank at home has a heater that kicks on at 77 F (which does come on at night) and it heats up to 80 - 82 with the lights on. 

I use the rk3 and my temp stays +- .5 deg.  My sump is in the basement which is 64 degrees.  I also have a temp controller that I bought for 35.00 at marine depot that will maintain the temp very accurately.  My heater is 250w and system is 90g.  My house stays around 68-72 in the winter.