Hot hot hot, ways to cool things down

It seems  the days gone from tough to tougher. Yo-yo weather last time was only the beginning. Last 2 days had been extremely hot at our place (though the afternoon seemed to be okay when the predicted thunderstorm hits). It seems more to be expected to come over the coming weeks, bush fire has started as well...

The water in the tank must have been more than 30 degree easily. Feeding fry doesn't seem to be so much fun anymore, worms placed in such warm water will just die off in a matter of an hour (or less, didn't monitor this). Quite surprising that the fry didn't want to take their foods, must have been busy trying to figure out how to cool their temperature down.

This time, we're prepared, just. The whole freezer has been preoccupied by blocks of ice. Tank temperature is lowered to 20 degree in the morning, let the temperature rises slowly by the warm air, and then in the afternoon a bunch of ice blocks dumped to the tank to further lower it to mid 20s. 5 Large tanks seemed to be doing okay with this technique. It also gives us some time to refill the freezer, making sure we have sufficient ice blocks.

Now, the problem is the 50-odd single containers. Moving them to the coolest area in house, the bathroom, doesn't seem to help. Temperature isn't getting 40 degree like outside, but it's still a fair 30+ degree. The problem is, in the morning the living room would be hotter cause it's facing east, but in the afternoon the bathroom which is facing west got the hit. This means, we have to move them from bathroom to living room in the afternoon, even though living room's temperature doesn't go down that quickly. Too tired to move them around, so they stay there. VZ has been complaining how she can't find her daily make up but she understands it's a temporary measure. Kids seemed to be okay with all this, they find it

No one has ample time to really get aircon fixed, it'll cost couple of grand cause it's ducted. So much for trusting the previous owner about top notch ducted aircon, they must had been cutting too much corner on doing the job.

We're testing a idea that we'll use when the temp rises too high next time. It works like this. Put individual fish to plastic bag (still need to buy this bag, don't have the good size at the moment), and then put the bag in the empty container. In the morning of predicted hot weather, we will each take some of the bettas to the office. This is fairly easily done by punching a hole in the mid level of the bag (above water level of course) and passing through a strong robe through it, before putting all bags into big shopping bag. Making sure we're not spilling any water, the robe act as the hanger for the bags. This way, they can get luxury treatment of aircon in the office, which usually stays around 25 degree :D

Well, we figured, we only have to do this once or twice, so it's no biggy. At the end of the day, when we came back home, we just offload the plastic bags back into the empty container, ready for the next heatwave. This whole trouble seems to be only worth doing when the temperature to be predicted 40+, anything lower than that seems to be manageable by the adult bettas.