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Temperature is a critical water quality parameter in aquaculture and is clearly critical to short term survival as well as long term behaviour such as growth and reproduction. Consequently, controlling water temperature is important to farmers, and information gained by controlling water temperatures can help understand and improve sustainability in aquacultural operations. Growing seasons have been extended and breeding programs expanded, reducing reliance on weather conditions. However, controlling water temperature can be costly, and economics is a significant impact on sustainability. If an inexpensive source of clean heated water such as geothermal water, industrial cooling water or solar heated water is unavailable, substitute technologies must be designed to use expensive energy efficiently. Furthermore, managing water temperature must reduce unnecessary waste for temperature control to be cost-effective. Temperature can also be critical in managing other water quality parameters such as nitrogenous wastes in water. Finally, we can consider temperature control and temperature change not only as an engineering parameter, but as a natural phenomenon that may be imposed on current agricultural or aquacultural systems. As such, engineers need to consider ways to manage such systems to maintain good production despite warmer temperatures, differing environmental conditions, or related situations to ensure sustainability for aquacultural systems.