Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guy's, Ive read a few threads about people using ice to cool down fish tanks and was wondering do you leave the ice in the bag itself or take out, just thinking of possible contaminants etc that may be in the ice.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I did it with my system when it was edging 33C, I put 10 (10kg)bags of ice in (about 3000L I think then), and it went down 1C, but the day was also cooling down, so I'm not sure if it did anything to be honest.

If it melts fast or slow, it'll still release the same amount cooling energy to the system.

If you're worried about temps, you're far better off turning off the growbeds for a few hours in the hottest parts of the day, they will control the temps more than anything else.

The ice will be made from drinking water, so the only contaminate would be chlorine/chloramines, and unless you're putting in masses of ice, it won't be an issue.

Cheers mate, much appreciated.

It takes about 50kg of deep frozen ice to cool ~6000litres by 1C, so you need quite a bit of ice to do any significant cooling for a reasonable sized system. I dropped the ice straight in, as it was just rainwater, which is the same as the fish were already in. Stopping water circulation through heat absorbing GBs in the hottest part of the day, as Colum mentions above, is the best way to keep the temperature rise down if you don't have access to vast quantities of ice- but make sure the fish have sufficient Oxygen.

Thanks for that Gunagulla.