Getting warmer.

I am very worried that my tank will get to hot in the summer (its hard to keep it at 65 in the winter without freezing my family). My tank is in my basement and it still gets warm in there during the summer. I will probably get a cheap air conditioner in a while but thats all I can do. A chiller is out of the question and using frozen bottles will be a lot of hard work. What can I do??

Ryan, you've been here a while now, you should have seen this by now.

Searching these forums, including a thread on this page, reveals that there are not many good methods for cooling that are not either expensive or intensive. Chillers, using an air conditioner to lower the ambient air temperature and using screen tops and fans on the lid to increase evaporative cooling are the only mechanical cooling methods that I've heard of that aren't elaborate (and potentially expensive.)

Other things you can do would be to evaluate your basement and find the coolest point. Take temperature readings everywhere, maybe the north wall is cooler? Or farthest from the stairs?

You might want to consider removing the submersible filter and using something that doesn't produce heat like a sponge or box filter.

Other than that you are going to have to use either dechlorinated ice cubes or half-filled frozen ice bottles. Honestly temperature was something you should have considered when you purchased your Necturus.

I considered temp. and I thought that I was getting AC in my basement during the summer. I will do every thing in my power to keep the tank cool. Believe me all I did was read about necturus care when I was thinking about getting the tank.

I have read that article on CC before. I didn't mean to seem ignorant about anything. If I did seem like an ignorant person I guess its just the shear amount of questions that I have been asking. Most of the questions I have asked (including this one) I had a basic idea of what the answer would be. I just think that answers from other people including personal expiriances help me out a lot.