Tent / Greenhouse Too Cold ... Aquarium Water Heater

my greenhouse is getting to sub 40's at night this winter.

So, since im using ebb & flow with a 55gal rez I will be trying to simply add an aquarium water heater to provide warm water to the root zone on flood cycles. Also the warm mass of water should warm the room up efficiently too, and in specific the nearby plants.

Since it gets to sub 40's at night, sometimes 32.5, I am thinking I should keep the water up to 75 degrees at least. This will be an experiment. I hope it works out perfectly.

Rosenthal said we can heat water up to 90 deg for plants suffering temps under 60 deg. But I don't want to breed bacteria and stuff

I really cant see that grow working out too good regardles of water temp. That is just plain too cold.

the heater will burn out inside of a month they arent designed to heat that large of a temperature gap...

Get a small electric ceramic heater and your problem is solved.. Insulate the outside of the tent if it isn;t in a building of some type out of the elements..

things ive learned:

air tight greenhouse during winter is important

55 gallon aquarium heater is only 17 or so...including thermostat

ill still get one....if it lasts 1 month its worth it...plus i can fix things sometimes

a ceramic space heater uses 1750 watts

an aquarium heater for 55gallons uses 200 watts max. Seems like a no-brainer.

well i called the local hydro store, and they had the active aqua 350 watt titanium reservoir heater. it has a thermostat. so i bought it. I'm gonna put that bitch in there!

this thing is actually quality. It looks like with the thermostat, I can use the separate heating element, or attach any other device to it, it even has room to plug in two things to be controlled ( two heater elements? )

my rez had to be damn near freezing....i could not keep my hand in there for very long at all....hand is still numb lol....i think ill add this to my other rez too that is hitting 46 deg ( and thats inside a shed! )

so its been running for about 14 hours and raised the water temp by about 25 degrees. I think my plants are gonna be much happier this evening than last evening

they have all appeared to "hault" growing fro the most part, even kind of stopped maturing. The trichomes just wont turn amber lol. When its cloudy out its only for 5 degrees hotter in the greenhouse than outside. That goes up to 15 degrees when sun is shining.

i think its working! plants bulked up a bit and going to cut one soon. outside temps hit 27deg lol....im going to do another round in here before winter is over so...I will probably get one of those propane tank burners or somethin for the really cold nights..maybe a 2nd heating element for the water first since it has a spot for 2....and can only get water to 90 deg in middle of a warm day...by the time it hits the buckets the water is only like 60 deg lol

im also going to stack a compost pile on the side away from the sun...once i get good at composting

edit: now im thinkin fuck it ill just use my portable bbq as the burner with no lid/grill/splash guard....leave it on low all night.should warm it up? lol...

had a great harvest. got a new round in there and things are going great. the bbq heater worked for a few days on one tank. Not cost effective enough. I doubled my reservoir so I should probably get a 2nd titanium heating element. So i might be up to 700w. Hmm....growing indoors seems more effective at this point. What I am now thinking to do, is make a bubble within the greenhouse out of 3 mil plastic. Maybe this 2nd dome /room/bubble will keep it hot enough.

dudes at hydro store did not recommend two heating elements to one thermostat. So I did buy a 2nd titanium heater w/thermostat from hydrofarm or whatever and using that in my veg tent...going great!

i might have to buy this to heat the greenhouse 100 gallons tho
http://www.amazon.com/15N-1500-Watt-Sinking-Heater-Guard/dp/B000BD8JAE

I also need some spray foam to seal up the holes and do some insulation on the north wall

now that its february and past the coldest part of january, things are doing GREAAT.....best 350watts a person can spend lol i'll be having like 3 harvests in there this winter lol