Keeping water temps up in the winter?

[Mrs. Warden]

This will be my first winter as a reef tank slave (eer keeper, lol). My question... I made up some salt water for a water change and allowed the water 24 hrs outside to make sure the salinity wasn't going to go up. When I brought it inside for the water change it was stone cold (here in CA we've had some unusally cold weather this week). I wasn't sure what to do to bring up the temperature so I could do my water change. I ended up leaving my buckets in front of my fireplace for several hours to bring up the temp before I did the water change. What else can I do to keep the temps up before the water changes? I don't want to buy more heaters (the Ebo Jager I have the the tank was expensive enough).

Tips? Suggestions?

Hugs, Ell

[gpohly]

Ell,

During a recent near-disaster w/ a chiller, I bought 75W hang-on heaters at Wal-Mart for about $12 ea. I don't know what kind of bucket you use to mix new water, but I use a clean 5-gal plastic bucket w/ lid I bought at HD for a few bucks. Should be easy enough to cut a small opening in the bucket lid to drop in the heater, and I'm sure that should keep 5gal. warm.

Good luck,
Glenn

[FishDaddy]

Ell,
I would recommend buying another good quality heater for two reasons:
1) You need to bring the new saltwater to tank temperature to check salinity and a heater is the only way to conveniently do this. Certainly any cheap heater will do this chore.
2) More importantly, during cold weather, the major risk to your tank is a big drop in water temperature. Though Ebo's are very good heaters, (I have 7 of them) like all mechanical devices they can fail and a spare may save your tank.
An Ebo or Visi-Therm 100w should be less than $20, mail order.
HTH
Dick

Ell, gotta agree with everyone on this, a good heater will be consistant and provide a backup if another one fails. I like the visi-therm submergible. In fact I need a bigger one for my 55g sump then I can use the smaller one to keep stand by water hot and rearing to go Boy its always something isn't it

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