72 F in winter with no T5s running?

hi all my tank has been up for 8 weeks today, i have not ran the lights at all and my tank has been at 72 steady, with the lights and the heat of summer do you think it will still be to cold and that i would need a heater....will every thing live and grow at 72? thanks all

 

I would get a heater and try to bump it to 78. If it is above 78 the heater will not come on...However a heater will prevent the temp swings you might have once your lights are on. I do not have a heater in my 135g but am starting to think about getting one because the chiller is on during the day at 78 and then at night it is dropping some

 

I don't have any personal experience with running a tank that low, and it might get that low at night after your lights go off. It probably depends what you want to stock though, there are more temperate stocking possibilities.

The thing you want to avoid is temperature swings even during the day, so if you turn your lights on and the temp goes up and then drops down to 72 at night that could introduce a lot of stress into the tank not to mention what if you get a cold spell for a couple days? What happens if your light fixture fries and it takes a day or two to replace, or your bulbs burn out and you don't have spares on hand? There are a lot of scenarios where having a heater would provide a lot of backup, redundancy is always safest.

I personally would not run a tank without a heater, too much possibility for unpredictability and I think it would be risking the whole tank.

My 2c...

 

I run a temperate tank and the temperature stays at a steady 70 degrees with no heater or chiller.

 

what do you grow in your tank?

 

I dont run heaters. I dont have a heating problem, Well I do have a problem of being to hot. W/o the a/c on my tanks run real warm with all the pumps and lights. So I bought a chiller to run instead of running my a/c all day. I have always been scared off from heaters. I am considerind hooking a heater up in my chiller. It has a plug in the back for a heater. How much of a temp swing is to much?