How do you do a "cool water change" to stimulate corys and plecos when you've got this?!?

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bekateen
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Re: How do you do a "cool water change" to stimulate corys and plecos when you've got this?!?

Post by bekateen »

Bas Pels wrote:Besides, a fridge in the house will eventually produce more heat, that is further heaten the house
TwoTankAmin wrote:-How much heat will a fridge that is turned on for only a few days every few months generate? On the other hand how much heat is being generated by the spawning tank year round? If one is running a tank at 80F that means it is pushing out that heat all day 24/7 for the most part. If heating the house is that big an issue from using a small fridge a few days a year, how can one run heated tanks year round?
-How much will the fish born because of that fridge sell for down the road? I am sure nobody who spawns catfish keeps all the offspring or even most of them.
-How much room will making under 3 gallons of chilled water take up in one's regular fridge?

And if one does not need the cold water enough times to use a small fridge, then use the ice method I suggested. The only expense there is the container that holds the ice water and the cost of the ice. Think of it like a cooler of beer at the beach :-)

Here is what I would ask. How much will be spent to buy and keep the fish involved in this discussion. How much will it cost to have them in a proper tank, how much heat will that setup generate, how much will be spent to feed and possibly medicate the fish and how much time will be devoted to the project? If this is all about getting the fish because the goal is to spawn them, then $50 for a small fridge and the cost of running it a few days a year seems small. How does it make sense to draw the line where it is being drawn here?
Bas Pels wrote:@ how much heat - I understood the topicstarter is now in a heat wave... the problem is that currently the weather is too hot, and therefroe onew would currently not want to heat the house moore than needed

With regard to the cost of the cooling - one can do the math, ending up with, say, spending 50 $ for saving 100 $ of fish. but than, I would say that we bouyght the fish, and therefore have an obligation to care for them. If omne would have to spend 100 $ for saving 50 $ of fish, I would also say - go for it. But I wouild prefer to do it wisely. That is why I wrote the above
Hi All,

Just some personal perspective here: I'm a fish keeper third after father and university professor, and a fish breeder fourth after that. Although I love it when my fish spawn, and honestly I hope they all do eventually (I've said it before, my philosophy is a spawning fish is a healthy fish), spawning the fish for the purposes of sales and profit later on is the last thing on my mind:

In the last four years, I think I've sold fewer than 10 fish for more than $10 USD. Most of my tank-spawned and raised fish have sold for $5 or less, including my , , , , and of course my clown plecos, . Although none of these are "expensive" fish, all of them would retail for more than $5 in stores around here; but of course I'm not a retailer and sales are not a line of revenue for me (and I'm not even counting my common corys (aeneus and trilineatus) or my ABNs because they sell for so little around here).

My point is this: For almost all of these, it will take me at least six months to raise them to what I consider minimum sellable size (1.5" SL for most of those spp). By the time you factor in the utilities to keep the fish (water and electric bills) plus the good quality food I provide over those six months, there is no profit to be made if and when I sell a handful of juvies for those prices (as an aside, I'm also known for giving some away for free). Any money I'd get from such sales is just a pittance, a trivial gesture from the buyers so that they have to contribute some modicum of money which I can put back into the hobby (never mind that for most species I split half of the money with my son, as a reward for his help with tank maintenance). Therefore, although the argument about the cost of running a fridge might be legitimate for a person who actually sells enough fish (in numbers) or who sells expensive fish to make some sliver of profit per fish, the cost of an extra fridge is not justifiable for a person in my situation.

About the "how much heat?" questions and how much heat is being pumped out of the aquaria, "year-round" doesn't matter (to clarify, not that it doesn't matter in the winter, but it doesn't pertain to the OP). Rather, what matters is "right now during the heat wave," and in this case the amount of heat being pumped OUT of the aquaria is very little. In fact, the point I made in an earlier post about heat analysis was that the aquaria aren't heat sources, they're heat sinks - they're absorbing heat from the house in the middle of the extremely hot days when it's so hot outside (even with my AC running), which is only offset by the heat lost due to evaporative cooling from the surface of the tanks (although the tanks are pretty tightly covered, so much of this is negated). It's so hot (sounds like there's a joke there - "How hot is it?"), I've got every aquarium heater in the house unplugged; even so, minimum overnight temperatures in my tanks are about 75-77F because of ambient house temperature combined with the heat generated by power heads and HOB filters with submerged impeller motors.

Another relevant point (and I think Bas Pels brought this up) is that although an extra fridge might not be needed all year round, it will be needed when it's really hot outside (the heat wave). And that's precisely the time that I don't want to go adding heat to the house in order to "cool off" the water. That would be the worst time to run more appliances in the house. Turning the fridge off when it's not hot outside doesn't help either - if anything, you'd like the heat the aquaria when it's cold outside, so more appliances in the house will only warm up the tanks in winter.

Finally, there's the argument of keeping fish alive. Myself, I feel there is a big difference between using extreme measures and added expenses to TRY to spawn fish (which aren't otherwise spawning naturally) versus using extreme measures and added expenses to keep pre-existing fish alive during severe weather. I think we all agree that once we accept fish into our homes as pets, we have an ethical and moral obligation to take responsibility for their welfare. And if we can't provide adequate housing (including proper temperature) for good health (not necessarily spawning), then we shouldn't keep the fish. I've learned that lesson a couple of times in the past, and as a result there are fish I will no longer buy until my housing situation changes to allow universally cooler temps (year-round) in my tanks. If I were to try to start keeping the cool-water species again, a cool basement would be needed or a recirculating water chiller would be necessary (expensive, but I'd just have to count it as a necessary "cost of care" for any cool water species I might try and keep in this house).

This is drifting off the OP a little, which was indeed about a heat wave in my area making it difficult to do cool-water changes to trigger spawnings. The air temps have dropped this week back into the mid 90's F, which is normal, although cold water temps are still in the upper 70's coming out of my taps. Every day or other day, I am still adding the ice-filled containers (2 or 3 18oz-bottles into a 20gal tank) in order to create temporary currents of cool water, but I have no expectation that these are creating long-lasting and significant drops in aquarium temp. The most I can hope for are a few hours worth of cool currents in the tank each day. Let's see if that does any good.

Cheers, Eric
Last edited by bekateen on 04 Aug 2016, 01:03, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: How do you do a "cool water change" to stimulate corys and plecos when you've got this?!?

Post by Shane »

Any money I'd get from such sales is just a pittance, a trivial gesture from the buyers so that they have to contribute some modicum of money which I can put back into the hobby
Wait, there is no money to be had breeding fish? There go my retirement plans :((
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bekateen
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Re: How do you do a "cool water change" to stimulate corys and plecos when you've got this?!?

Post by bekateen »

Not the way I (and most people I know) do it. =))

Shane, please pass that along to the USFWS on my behalf. ;-)
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