Keeping a reservoir warm?

[Smokey]

Bulls I have had my aquarium heating in my res (all plastic WHAM boxes) for two years now.

I tested what would happen if the res ran dry and no fire.

Make sure you do one of two things.
A. Make sure the aquarium heater is well seated on its suction feet.
B. What I do - I fit the aquarium heater to a solid base that can not melt - I use a slate tile left over from doing the kitchen floors.

Incredible Viz i have been threating over this for some time now so glad i found this thread,

[wutang]

Hey @Bulls

Sorry I know this is an old thread..I came across it whilst searching online.

I've been using a fishtank heater in my 47l autopot tank.

Whilst I made my feed too strong..what I noticed is that leaving my heater on around 22c on average, it was evaporating the water and making the ec high. I had a circulator to keep the solution mixed as well but I saw a lot of talk build up around my heater, circulator and grommet around the pipework in the tank. The excess feed was my fault.

So my theory was that it was evaporating the water, as I saw loads of condensation on the underside of the lid..and there's a hole on the lid, thus raising the ec over a few days from 1.9 to 2.6 as the water evaporated. I used a hydor theo 200w heater..set it at 20c but always is around 22c and max it reaches at times was 25c!

In the end I've taken the heater and circulator out. The tank felt grimey and so did these two bits. I started to get issues soon after I added these bits in to my set up where one plant is showing deficiencies/nute burn / lock out.

I'm outdoor in a garage so it does get cold in winter. As it's autopots..they go and sit in the pots for a bit before th3 plants take it up so I'm hoping they'll get to tent temps of around 19c/22c before they drink.

Just my theory

[Ganjamanz]

Maybe you could wrap a heat mat around the resivour for a few +°c

[Sage]

I'd suggest looking at wort warmers. It's something you'd use brewing beer if temps were cool enough to inhibit yeasts from converting sugars to alcohol. They are like 5 inches across, individually controlled, and fairly cheap. My thinking is this instead of raising the temp of all the fluid causing possible evaporation, these would warm each autopot and since would be underneath the pots would be stopping the cooling effect of sitting on a cold floor. That would mean it wouldn't need to be a lot of heat just some to offset the cold floor slowing your grow without raising fluid temps that much. Research brewing supplies and you should find what I'm talking about, hopefully this might work for you. Happy growing and good luck.

[wutang]

I know Marcus doesn't bother with cold water etc..and it seems to work for him. In theory I get it, that the feed shouldn't be too cold. It has been around 12c in my garage on average for th3 last few weeks. One of the four I have in the tent is still striving and it is outperforming all of them. The other 3 were my mistake as I think I caused a massive lockout with a combination of the heater playing a big part I think..I used to see a lot of evaporation increasing the ec