How Much Heat Does Your Marine Aquarium Lose Per Hour

Welcome to Simple Reefs. We are a brand new website designed to take the stress and expense out of starting your very own marine aquarium. We have been talking about aquarium heaters a lot, as of late. In my last article on why you should still use a marine aquarium heater even in warm homes and warm climates. I featured a handy calculator to answer the question of how much heat does your marine aquarium lose per hour?

A Handy Heat Loss Calculator

If you choose not to use a heater in your aquarium, perhaps because you live in a warm climate or have a warm home, your aquarium is going to be subject to temperature fluctuations. These fluctuations can come along with the fluctuations in temperature from outside or the fluctuations within your own home.

When your home cools, your tank’s water will cool along with it. It’s quite simple. When this happens, the fish and coral in your aquarium can suffer dramatically. In fact, if the cooling continues unabated, they can begin to suffer from something known as thermal shock and may even die.

You are probably wondering just how much your tank’s water will cool depending on the temperature in your home. Well, this calculator can help. You can enter your tank’s volume, the ambient temperature of your home, and the temperature of your tank’s water.

The calculator will then tell you how much heat you are likely to lose per hour in a typical situation. You might be shocked at the difference just a degree or two drop in ambient temperature makes to your thermal stability.

Preparing For an Emergency

This marine aquarium heat loss calculator can help you be a little more prepared in an emergency. Let’s say, for example, you are experiencing a cold snap and your electricity has gone out. Your home starts to cool and you know the power will be off for several more hours.

You can grab the ambient temperature of your home and work out how many hours you have before your tank reaches a dangerously low temperature. This will help you to take pre-emptive counter-measures like wrapping your tank in a duvet or potentially hooking a heater up to a generator or inverter. We will be talking all about this very soon.

Instead of sitting on your hands, you can be prepared to prevent the problem from getting any worse. After all, you might be surprised at how quickly your tank, particularly smaller aquariums, can lose heat and leave your fish in danger.

Use This Calculator With Caution

I should point out, you should always use tools like this with caution. I can only put this calculator together with very basic figures and I have to make a lot of assumptions to do this. I am not the greatest math’s wiz in the world, either. Some of my calculations may be off and there are factors specific to your aquarium which will impact the accuracy.

Remember, the calculator can’t adjust for your own living conditions and your tank setup. More surface agitation, for example, will lead to more heat loss, thicker glass will lead to less, etc. It’s a very, very, rough guide that you can use to make a very rough estimate.

I have used these figures when the power has gone out and I have been left without a heater in the dead of winter. The thickness of the glass in my main aquarium meant that the figures were ever so slightly off but when it came to my smaller tanks they were pretty surprisingly accurate. Results may vary so read the disclaimer.