We have been having hot summer temperatures here in Texas for at least two months. Over the past several weeks the temperature in my 75 gallon tank has climbed to 83 degrees.

Yesterday I picked up a 6 inch clip-on fan from Wal*Mart and put it on the side of the tank with the hood open. Over the past 24 hours it has brought the water temp down to 77 degrees! This is amazing to me -- I would have thought that cooling down that large a volume of water with a small fan would take much longer. In the past I have tried adding ice cubes and even buckets of ice would not bring the temp down that much. I have turned the fan down now because I don't want the water to get too cool!

I had actually begun to think about investing in a chiller (WAY expensive for the equipment and the electricity to run it) -- I am glad that I tried the $9.99 fan first!

P.S. There is definitely a shock hazard associated with this -- depending on your hood set-up, the fan could tip over into your tank and shock all your fish. I was careful to set my fan up so that it could not fall in accidentally. Please be careful.

I am thrilled that the fan is working for you. Sometimes the simplest things work the best. Opening up the top and increasing air circulation is exactly the correct thing to do.

My tands regularly run about 82F during the summer. I do not worry about it. I just let them be. The fish are happy, healthy and growing well at those temps. All I do make sure is that there is plenty of circulation. I have many airstone, waterfall filters and the tops are open. I have one fan going in the fish room - a simple rotating one on a stand. It does the trick.

82F is not a big deal.

good idea!! ...I have not yet been over 80 yet ...on hot days I keep all lights off window coverings closed and lights of in the tank as well I noticed if it is a bit tad warm they take it pretty easy and I leave them be as well

This is a good thread

My tank jumped up to 84F this week when the heat wave hit, the only things I could do was to open the glass lid both sides and do a nice big water change. In my tank I have 2 HOB as water falls (keeping the water level low so they will make more water movement) and a canister, which the spray bar is slightly above the water level to make more water movement.

The other way to keep a fan going on the top of the tank would be to have a table were you could place a fan on and let it blow over the water too

Thanks for the feedback. I got worried about it when someone (Trinket? Pixiefish? I don't remember who) expressed concern in another thread over tank temps above 80. Perhaps that was just in the context of a sick fish?

The fan will be helpful because I have been running my AC more during the day when no one is home than I otherwise would in order to keep the tank temp from climbing into the 85 degree range. Perhaps I can just run it during the day when the AC is off.

they could of been concerned about high temp with ammonia present which can be dangerous ,as well with high ph

Hehe that was me. Due to the fact alot of people are having dropsy and redness of tail fins. The heat seems to be causing issues when it goes up to fast on them and they cant get the water out of there systems. One of my fish started showing problems when my temp jumped from 74F to 83F in one day.

I think this is going to be a long hot year