Keeping 125 gallon tanks warm in a garage with no heat in the dead of winter?

[JimmyNineToes]

Hello all, I was able to obtain several 125 gallon glass tanks and I will be stacking them on a industrial pallet rack in my home garage. My garage has no heat what so ever and here in Southern NJ it can sometimes get into the teens over night. I would like to set each tank species specific. One will have just Tiger Barbs, second one will be shrimp and guppies and the third will have German blue rams. How can I keep the tanks from dropping below mid 70s? Would this Hygger heater work and if so how many per tank? It would be impossible to move the tanks or the fish into the home. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[johnnyxxl]

I suspect that you will need to heat the garage at least some to help the heater keep the tanks appropriately warm.

[reefhugger]

I agree with @johnnyxxl that heating the garage is needed.  Some of my opinion has to do with the general shelf life of heaters themselves which seems to be fairly short under "normal" conditions.  In an unheated garage in winter temperatures  I imagine the heaters will be working overtime.  Maybe build a smaller insulated room within the garage for the tanks?

[johnnyxxl]

On 8/13/2024 at 5:06 AM, reefhugger said:

I agree with @johnnyxxl that heating the garage is needed.  Some of my opinion has to do with the general shelf life of heaters themselves which seems to be fairly short under "normal" conditions.  In an unheated garage in winter temperatures  I imagine the heaters will be working overtime.  Maybe build a smaller insulated room within the garage for the tanks?

That's what Simply Betta did for her fish room.

[gabdewulf]

This is the cheapest least elegand way.

I would get a insulation board from the big box store and surround the stand on 3 sizes and a radiator heater. When the worst of the winter appears, get some wrap insulation to cover the front of the stand. 

 

I'm between Harriesburg and Philly in the se crook of the hills. Even in a fully buried basement, I have two radiator heaters running and still have to wrap the basement outside door in insulation for the winters.

[jwcarlson]

It won't be much for looking at, but you can put the thick foam insulation (big pink or blue sheets depending on if it's Lowes or HD).  And basically... make a shell around your tank.  In my head if you leave a lot of air space around what you're insulating with as high of humidity as you're going to have, you will have condensation and water droplets all over everything.  So that's another consideration.  I'd find a way to keep them indoors, personally.  

Not to be lost in all of this, but if you have 3 kW of heat running for 12 hours per day that's 36 kWh per day at New Jersey average of >17 cents per kWh is around $6 per day in electric.  That's also 25 amps if they're all on at the same time.  I'm out of fish keeping now, but I ended up splitting my fish room onto a few circuits because between the fish, a couple of snakes, and a couple of deep freezers... there was a lot of current draw at times.  You don't want that kicking out a circuit breaker at midnight and turning your fish into ice cubes.  And that's not considering the cost.  My electric was close to $400/month when averaged through the year.

[gardenman]

Two questions. Is the garage attached or free-standing? And will you still be using it at least partly as a garage? An attached garage will get at least some heat from the house it's attached to even if the garage is "unheated." The house design can play a big role in that. If the garage is tacked onto the end of the house it won't get as much heat as if it's plopped down more in the middle and surrounded on three sides and the ceiling by heated rooms. If you're still going to use it as a garage, then you'll have wild swings in temperature as the garage door gets opened and closed.

Obviously, insulating the tanks to contain the heat in them is vital. An option to consider is building a rigid styrofoam "room" around the tanks in the winter. The two-inch rigid foam is rigid enough to be used in this manner. A 125-gallon tank is typically six feet long. The rigid foam comes in four-by-eight-foot sheets. Two sheets for the front and back (an eight-foot-by eight-foot wall), one more for each end (four by eight) and one for the top and you can build a room within the room with a couple of feet around the tanks. Seven or so sheets of foam, some good strong wide tape to hold everything together and you've got a room within the room that you can heat fairly easily. Definitely add a smoke detector in the garage and that room if you do so and keep a good bigger fire extinguisher handy as foam can/does burn. If things go wrong, you need to be able to intervene quickly. Some 2 X material to reinforce any sagging could be needed depending on the foam.

Heating a 4X8X8 foot space that's very well insulated and draft-sealed isn't terribly hard. A smallish space heater could likely do the job. Larger volumes of water (250 gallons or so in this case) tend to be fairly temperature stable. Lots of moisture will get trapped in that space and it may not be the healthiest air to breathe in with mold and other issues arising from the absurd level of humidity, but it's doable in the short-term. There are bags of humidity absorbing chemicals to be hung that might be a useful addition to whatever you opt for. They come in ten or twelve packs for around $20 on Amazon and could help keep the humidity under some control. There are also boxes of moisture control stuff that can be used.