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Temperature Swing- Pico


toastiireefs

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My Pico is almost cycled. It has about 5-10ppm of Nitrates, 0 Nitrites, and 0 Ammonia.

I do not have a heater in it, but I have a powerhead and an LED light, and a return pump in it.

It is about 76.5 in the morning - the lights are off all night, and then in the evening it is about 78.5.

I can lift my lights a little higher to reduce the heat coming off of those, but I was wondering if that two degree swing during the day will be detrimental.

I do not want to get a heater, because the ambient temperature of the tank sits around 76 degrees currently.

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Two degrees will be fine.  But you may still want a small heater set ~74 to keep the temps from dropping too low if your house heater quits in winter.

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I doubt that you will keep the room that the tank is in this warm during mid-winter. You will almost certainly need a heater then. Until then, a heater (which kicks on rarely) will keep your temperature flux tighter. $0.02.). If you have a return pump then you have a sump in which to hide it, I would think. Can't see a reason not to add one.

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I have a 14g biocube that has been converted to be rimless and has an AI Prime over it so that puts out like no heat at all. I have one pump running to my GFO/Carbon reactor and another pump as my return pump from my canister filter. It’s been up through two different winters now and I have found that those two pumps running continuously keeps it at exactly 76.2 year round but there have been days or weeks that the weather has gone crazy and it has had a 4 degree +- swing and everything is perfectly fine. Bonus to not having a heater in the back chamber has also allowed room for an internal refugium so I was able to just grab some cheato from one of my larger systems and stuff it in there and the display light is more than enough to light the cheato.

 

 

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(edited)

I doubt that you will keep the room that the tank is in this warm during mid-winter. You will almost certainly need a heater then. Until then, a heater (which kicks on rarely) will keep your temperature flux tighter. $0.02.). If you have a return pump then you have a sump in which to hide it, I would think. Can't see a reason not to add one.

Thanks! There is not actually that much room, because I do not have a sump, but a separate back chamber- which is really small. I could fit a small heater in there. The aquarium is only 3 gallons.

In the winter I will reevaluate- I keep my house around 68, in the winter, so that is a bit on the chilly side- but with the pumps and light, it may be a bit warmer in the tank, we will have to see!

 

 

I have a 14g biocube that has been converted to be rimless and has an AI Prime over it so that puts out like no heat at all. I have one pump running to my GFO/Carbon reactor and another pump as my return pump from my canister filter. It’s been up through two different winters now and I have found that those two pumps running continuously keeps it at exactly 76.2 year round but there have been days or weeks that the weather has gone crazy and it has had a 4 degree +- swing and everything is perfectly fine. Bonus to not having a heater in the back chamber has also allowed room for an internal refugium so I was able to just grab some cheato from one of my larger systems and stuff it in there and the display light is more than enough to light the cheato.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yea! I really want to make half of one of my back chambers a section for chaeto. Trying to decide if I want the filter side to be for Chaeto or the return pump side/ which I would split horizontally in order to get it to fit.

Edited by toastiireefs
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Thanks! There is not actually that much room, because I do not have a sump, but a separate back chamber- which is really small. I could fit a small heater in there. The aquarium is only 3 gallons.

In the winter I will reevaluate- I keep my house around 68, in the winter, so that is a bit on the chilly side- but with the pumps and light, it may be a bit warmer in the tank, we will have to see!

 

 

 

Yea! I really want to make half of one of my back chambers a section for chaeto. Trying to decide if I want the filter side to be for Chaeto or the return pump side/ which I would split horizontally in order to get it to fit.

Having the cheato in the back chamber works really well. I don’t even really use my chambers for any filtration apart from the cheato. They just house 2 pumps and some bio balls because I had the room and the bio balls. I threw the cheato in the third chamber with both the canister filter and the gfo/carbon reactor returning into the cheato chamber below the level of the cheato so all of the returned water has to float up and through the cheato before it can overflow back into the tank.

 

b8a44e1ad0dd98f330e9a34bbfc0f5e2.jpg3c87896f57969b86c1706f6bcebccd02.jpg

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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