Temperature Range?!?!?

[airjoe33]

What should be the temperature for the tank? Or should i ask what is the desired temp for corals and or fish...

Any help would help, got new lighting on my tank and its raised the temp of the tank and i was just making sure on where it should be at. Thank you

[chrisp074]

78-82 is pretty widely excepted but you want it stable within this range, so 82 when the lights are on and 78 when they are off is not a good thing.

[oceanparadise1]

I totally disagree. If you ask alot of people on here(esp the people with a lot of exp) going from 77-83 daily is fine. Most fish in the wild experience this daily. My tank goes from 77-83 daily and i can keep anything and everything as long as you dont go below or above those you will be fine. Temperature swings are not bad.

[MalHavoc]

Originally posted by oceanparadise1
I totally disagree. If you ask alot of people on here(esp the people with a lot of exp) going from 77-83 daily is fine. Most fish in the wild experience this daily. My tank goes from 77-83 daily and i can keep anything and everything as long as you dont go below or above those you will be fine. Temperature swings are not bad.

Ummm... no. swings of any kind should be dealt with carefully. One of the big benefits of the ocean is that it's stable. Sure, things do cool off a bit at night, but not a whole lot. Just because you can do it in a reef tank and it's "fine" doesn't mean that it's the way to go

[oceanparadise1]

I guess we agree to disagree then bc i know alot of reefers who have swings like that, the ocean is no 82 during the day and 77 at night, it swings all the time.

[timschmidt]

As you can see you will get quite a few answers. I personally try to minimize this temperature variance only because in the ocean a fish has many different pockets of water temperature that they can head to such as water currents and different depths. But not so in our tanks. Just how I see things. My corals and fish tend to hide more often when I have a temp swing greater than a 2 or 3 degrees.

[MalHavoc]

Granted, temp swings may be less of an issue with fish, but I guarantee that you'll start having problems with corals, especially SPS, if you allow your temperature to fluctuate that much.

[airjoe33]

well my tank stables pretty close when the lights are on and off, but when i added my new lights it raised right at 82-83 but cools off right around 81 so doesnt drop to much but i thought 83 was high for a tank.... the new lights did started to make the tank a lil dirty looking though so ive been watching that carefully

[oceanparadise1]

Hmm you got something going there with teh SPS. I dont have sps, so i havent noticed anything being TICKEd off yet!

[timschmidt]

I think we can all agree that the 2 or 3 degree swing you are experiencing is not a huge issue and all you should have to do is up your night time temp a degree or so. I have heard that up to 84 is still ok. I personally shoot for 81-82 right now.

[jimbo78]

Originally posted by MalHavoc
One of the big benefits of the ocean is that it's stable. Sure, things do cool off a bit at night, but not a whole lot.

actually on most of the reefs i dive there are thermalclines that change depths every day. on one dive the temp can drop 3-5 deg. at 20 feet on the descent and while surfacing the same thermal could be at 15 feet.

that being said i try to keep my tank the same temp all the time, but still it swings between 79 and 80 many times throughout the day

[marineaddict]

I'm on the side of temp swings being ok... as long as they are not huge! Mine goes from 78 to 82 most days.... no issues to date. I aim for 79 to 80 to answer your question on temp. I agree that stable is better.... but will require a chiller no matter what lights you run. Heck, depending on the temp in your house you may need a chiller without lights......

[pledosophy]

What kind of fish and corals are you planning on keeping? Different things need different temps.

One of my tanks is at 78F. Another one is at 72F. Another at 68F.

[marineaddict]

Originally posted by pledosophy
What kind of fish and corals are you planning on keeping? Different things need different temps.

One of my tanks is at 78F. Another one is at 72F. Another at 68F.

Great question!!! You are 100% right. There are some species that require colder water....

[Toddrtrex]

My tanks are mainly SPS, with Haddoni anemones, my temps swing from 78 to 83 each day. Has been like that for years, and everything is doing great.

[Flavum]

a 2-3 degree difference in one day will cause your tank to go into a huge meltdown!!!

No I have always heard that swings it temps are really hard on animals but mine will fluctuate aroeund 3 or 4 degrees everyday with my halide and I personally havent ran into any problems. just my experience

[greenbean36191]

The worldwide average range for reefs is 77-86. The yearly average is about 82 with the growth optima for most species that have been studied being 82-84. There are no species in the hobby that are true reef animals that require temperatures colder than that.

There is no evidence that fluctuations are stressful to either reef fish or corals. Reefs are not thermally stable by any stretch of the imagination and fish do not move around the reef in search of constant temperatures. The typical daily range is 3-5 deg F, but some reefs see as much as 15 deg F per day. These are not slow changes either. It's well documented that minute-to-minute changes are often as much as half of the yearly variation. Also, the magnitude of variation tends to be very high within the first 3 ft or so, dropping off a bit and then increase with depth again down to about 90-120 ft. These are the conditions our animals, including SPS, evolved in and they do quite well.

The instability of reef temps has been a source of frustration for me since I study thermal stress in reef animals. I've had whole days of experimentation ruined because our chiller went down and the seawater we were pumping in from 50 ft deep was changing 4-5 degrees per hour. The animals don't care, but that's way too much to allow for accurate calibration of our instruments.

Now you certainly can stress animals with fluctuations if you acclimatize them to stability beforehand. You can do the same with the maximum temperature too. The overly simple version of the story is that the animals will first start to show stress at 2-4 deg F above the normal maximum they see, whether that's 78 or 84. Fluctuations increase the amount of change below that maximum and possibly above that that are acceptable. In other words, if you keep a tank at a rock solid 78 the animals will be much more susceptible to any future fluctuations than the same animals kept at say 78-82.

[airjoe33]

well right now i just i just have a few corals in my tank but im more into the stoney's right now i have a monti and a candy coral with a few mushrooms here and there, and some zoo's but starting to get some funding finally and starting to build up my corals. thanks for all the help everyone.

What temp do the Stoney corals prefer?

[greenbean36191]

The worldwide average range for reefs is 77-86. The yearly average is about 82 with the growth optima for most species that have been studied being 82-84.