Temperatures and the Red Sea Max 250

One of the things that isn’t very good on the Red Sea Max 250 is the heat control. It has much trouble getting rid of the heat of the lighting and environmental heat, most people buy a cooling device to take care of this, but in some cases, like our, this is just not enough.

The problem first came to light when we had our first summer with the RSM, luckily the system only had life rock in it back then, but the temperatures in the house got to a 30 degrees Celsius, and inside the aquarium even higher. Now I must add that our apartment is always warm, we live on the 7^th floor of a 9 floor apartment complex and because of other animals we have we can’t open all the windows and doors against each other.

But after that summer we bought ourselves a DC-300 cooler and temperatures stayed around the 25-26 degrees Celsius. Then one day one of our cats closed the door of the RSM cabinet and the cooler couldn’t get rid of his heat. Since then it still works but makes a lot of noise, the door has been removed just to be sure.

Now last summer the cooler had a hard time, it was its first summer and he couldn’t get the temperature down to 25 anymore. However, the temperature rarely went up above 26 degrees Celsius. So all and all it didn’t do that bad, but then last weeks we noticed the temperature go up to 27 degrees. Outside it isn’t so warm anymore, but still the temperature kept going up to 27. Then the cooler did his job and made it go down to 25 again, but within minutes we where back at 27 again. Time to do some experimenting!

First thing I did was open the hood, turn of the lights and use a table fan to blow over the water surface. Temperature dropped in no time without the cooler even bothering to start. Time for the lights to go back on again!

This second step didn’t change anything, but I had to turn down the fan a bit because temperature dropped below 25 degrees all of a sudden.

Next step I closed the hood except for the small piece on the front, temperature got to 25 again but didn’t go up…it was stable at 25 degrees Celsius. Conclusion, a table fan and partially open hood regulate temperature better then the cooling system.

I have kept my eye on it for couple of days, and one thing I noticed is that I have to turn of the fan at night, because with the lights out the temperature drops too quickly. Also the evaporation of the water is quicker in this way, but this is the reason it stays cooler I guess.