Living in North Dakota, I get the privilege of having to keep aquarium fish alive when biting cold winds are blowing through windows and walls.
It’s fun I guess.
In the past, I’ve lost fish due to quick temperature changes when a room is not properly heated. I’ve learned a couple things to keep that from happening again.
It’s not uncommon for the temperature of a room to drop into the 50-60 degrees range during the winter, especially if I’ve neglected to turn up the thermostat and it’s biting cold outside.
For this reason, I like to run two heaters in the aquarium during the winter. One is a backup. This ensures that if one heater dies, the other will be able to keep the water temps consistent.
I also have a bare minimum temp that I always keep the thermostat set to, even when away for extended periods of time. I don’t set the thermostat in my aquarium room to anything less than 60 degrees in the winter. Most of the time it’s not an energy consumption issue with that particular cut-off point.
In addition to this, I also take care to make sure that the windows in the aquarium room don’t excessively leak cold air. Sometimes windows can be horrible in terms of keeping cold air out during cold months. I like to cover them up with thick blinds. I’m usually trying to keep excessive light out of the aquarium room anyways, so covering windows isn’t a bad thing for my situation.
Either way, the main idea is this: Make sure that your aquarium will not be subject to temperature drops during the winter. Don’t overwork a single heater. Keep room temperatures consistent.
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