Habitat - Indoor

Hi all. I live in Phoenix and the water coming out of the faucet is 89 degrees F. I need to do a water change and I'm looking for some suggestions on how to get the water temperature back down once I do the change. Is there a risk of cracking the tank glass if I dump a bag of ice in the tank? I'm open to any suggestions. Thanks.

I wouldn't dump a bag of ice in. Can you freeze a 2 litre bottle of some water bottles full of water and let those float around in there?

Also you could point a fan at the surface of the water. That will help cool it down but will also increase the evaporation rate.

if you figure this one out, let me know. Miss Tee's water was @ 86 last weekend--east coast heatwave--that's WITH the AC cranked to 70. (window unit) Ice bottles or fan doesn't really help me much.
If you have central air, I would think you could fill the tank with the water that's available...and put your turtle in another container for 24 hours while the tank water cools down?

I live in Arizona too and the water is just coming out soooo warm! What I did was filled a bucket big enough for the water I needed and put some frozen water bottles in and let it sit until it got to tank temperature. I used about four water bottles and it only took about 15 minutes.

If you want to go the high tech expensive route, water chillers do exist. Search any online reef / fish store for chiller...

Being an engineer, my intuition tells me the frozen water bottles won't cool down approximately 40 gallons of 89F water quick enough. I believe I'm going to try the following idea:

I'll get a 5 gallon buck and create an outlet at the bottom with a hose. I'll place the 5 gallon bucket either on top of the tank or on a ladder next to but above the tank. The 5 gallon bucket will be filled with enough ice to drop the temperature to the correct point (this will take some trial and error). Then I'll just have someone help me, while one person takes care of the python to fill the bucket, the other person can keep the ice level in the bucket at the correct level.

drill holes into the bucket, a lot of them, but make sure they are small enough that ice cubes won't get through.

somehow suspend the bucket above the tank, then start using the faucet to push water through the ice down and out of the holes of the bottom of the bucket, this should cool it very fast.

i used this same principle, except with air, to make a ghetto AC unit for when im at school since we don't have AC, but we have an ice machine down the hall with unlimited ice, the air that comes out is around 55 degrees generally

If I didn't already have a chiller, I would drive over to a local reef shop, pick up whatever chiller they had in stock, drive it home, hook it up, dial in my desired temperature and have a beer while I watch the tank cool down to my selected temperature.

I like your bucket and ice idea though I'd approach it slightly different. I too would fill the bucket of ice, but I would put a six pack in the ice bucket to keep the bottles cold while I watch the chiller work it's magic.

i'd take the money you just spent on that chiller, and buy enough beer to satisfy my thirst for months

Other than Guinness and few select others, I homebrew.

In all seriousness, chillers are only a few hundred bucks. A very small price to pay for the health of your turtle knowing that you can set and maintain a desired temperature if you're around or not. Good heater + chiller and your tank temperature stays put.

oh you're one of those homebrewers, that completely explains everything, one of "those" people, lmao!

another ghetto workaround would be to find an old fridge, you can find a mini-fridge for like $20, drill two holes in it, and route your filter tubing through it, put as many coils as possible in it, just don't make your angles too tight, plug the fridge in and watch the water cool! sealing the edges of the tubing in the inlet and exit of the fridge would help too

if you wanna get fancier, get one of those adapters that turns the power on and off depending on what the thermostat reads.

if cheaper yet, depending on the indoor temperature, you could get a radiator and rig that up to your filter tubing and put a fan on the radiator, or just put the radiator in front of the AC unit in your house if possible

trying to give alternative solutions for people who don't wanna shell out that kinda cash for the same effect

No worries. You go college budget, I'll go business class and we'll meet in the middle.

Speaking of beer... how about like a jockey box approach? Pump in the tank connected to a really long hose. Hose leaves tank enters a cooler, hose is coiled in cooler then returns to tank. Inside of cooler is dry ice. Similar to your ghetto fab mini-fridge chiller idea.

I'd still buy another chiller if I had this problem. If you want fancy... hook your chiller up to your aquarium controller.

quick googling showed that dry ice is ~$1-$2/lb, that would do that trick though, regular ice might work as well, although it will take longer than dry ice to get the water temps down

Around here walmart sells dry ice by the pound fairly cheap... in the price range you mention.

Habitat - Indoor :: Faucet water 89F and need to do water change, suggestions?

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