tank cooling with ice cubes?

All -

I know tank cooling has been talked a lot about, but bear with me.

I've read about the ice bottles, but that seem to be a lot of cooling mass to introduce, and might cool things down too quickly.

So I've been wondering about using ice cubes. Why not simply throw 3 or 4 ice cubes into the tank a few times a day? I could assess whether it really helps or not by watching the temperature, but my main concern for now is...

...could it hurt?

- Darwin's Dad

You can use smaller bottles of water if you are finding they cool things down too quickly. Or just don't fill the bottles all the way up.

With ice cubes, I think they melt too fast and cause more temperature swings - in my experience. How big is your tank? If you are only using 3-4 cubes that might not be enough anyway. Also you need to make your own ice with dechlorinated water. Perhaps experiment for a bit and see how you go but yea, most people don't recommend ice because it melts too quickly (ice in a bottle melts a lot slower). If it is causing your temperature to change too quickly then you'll need to look at other options.

Do you have any measurements on the time it takes an ice bottle to cool down your tank? To my experience it takes some time (as long as your tank is bigger than the bottle used).

Throwing in 3-4 ice cubes will have almost no effect on the temperature of a tank (if you mean the kind of cubes you use for drinks and such). Additionally I do not like the idea to add water into the tank that might have been in contact with frozen food and so on - maybe I'm wrong but I have the picture in mind that they might be contaminated with some bacteria and germs (there are some bacteria surviving freezing). You can clean a bottle ahead of putting it into the tank but that would be quite hard with ice cubes.

But I have to admit that I do not know the way you freeze water over there, so maybe it is a clean way - nevertheless the mass and temperature difference would be way too little in my opinion; the cubes would melt without any significant effect.

No it doesn't

Nope I tried that too, ice cubes do not work, they just make the very wet, (depending on how many and how big your tank is), the cold water bottles work alot better.

I use 600ml frozen water bottles in my 45cm long tank and they take a couple of hours to melt and drop the temp by 1-2 degrees celsius. They trick is to replace it with another as soon as it's melted to then keep the temperature down and avoid it going down and up then down again. Using polystyrene foam around the tank on three sides helps extend this process and keep the tank cooler longer. Ice cubes melt very quickly and you need heaps and temperature fluctuation are very hard to avoid; have tried them a couple of yr ago with my goldfish.

another thing to put around your tank is astrofoil....(my cats tore my polystyrene to shreds)
the hydroponics industry uses it to keep the heat of the lights away from the plants..... tis white on one side, silver on the other and has a single layer of like bubble wrap sandwiched inbetween..
our tank is next to a fireplace and in winter the tank doesnt heat up.... (we tested it on a goldfish tank last winter, hence putting it on tomorrow on the axies) and the better half reckons it does a brill job at keeping heat out too... with ice bottles in conjunction temp control much easier....

Where do you find the astrofoil? A plant nursery, or do you need to go to a special hydroponic supplier?

hubby said bunnings has it aswell as hydroponics nurseries.. it costs a bit more but is ,I find, much better quality.... He used to sell it for about$7.00 a metre length which was 1.2m wide

Will look for that at bunnings; my kids can't resist picking at the polystyrene....