I run a little air compressor that gives me 60lt/s and I have in a cool area like 8meters away from my tent ,and my water temperatures round 20°c to 21,5°c ,I’m still searching for the best root grower .
Other fact that I’ve experienced is to not place seedlings in hydro if they don’t have already a good root channel ,the oxygen bubbles just brake the crap out the roots .
But I decided to grow in hydro,I experienced in ground and had always problems with overwatering,so why not place the roots in water.
Thanks @Halloweengeek, can you clarify: you run an air compressor as an air pump, and it helps keep your water temperatures cool??
What do you use to monitor your reservoir temperatures? I was going to buy those aquarium thermometers, but I won’t know what the temperatures are when I am sleeping/not in the room.
I have my bucket set up in the tent with just water and I have been running the temperatures at 25c and with just my air pump outside the tent in my grow space, the water temperature seems to sit at 20.9c and 19.8c at night, but I have seen it go to 22c…
I think those are good ranges… but I will be buying a mini fridge to install the air pump in it.
The next phase of testing is to put my nutrient mix in the bucket and run that for a few days to see how the ph fluctuates. Of course it will be different when I have a living plant, but at least I will have some baseline.
Hey have you seen the wort chillers that beer brewers use to cool the wort? If it is the water temps you need to cool then this could be a possible solution if there is not something purpose made on the market already.
Hi @SJ1, thanks for sharing that. First I have heard of it. Just looking it up online. " A wort chiller works by using a cool water source passing through copper or steel; as the cool water passes through the chiller, it absorbs heat from the wort ."
I would need to run cool water through this device, so It wouldn’t make send for me. That would require a cold water source and re-circulating that cool water.
With the air pump in a fridge, I can “kill 2 birds with 1 stone” so-to-speak. Since I need to Aerate the nutrient solution at all times, having cool/cold air being pumped into the nutrients makes most sense for me. I can control the water temps by using the fridge thermostat control.
Yeah I’m not 100% clear on your setup or what you wanted to achieve, I just thought chilling the actual water vs chilling the air to bubble through it would be more effective for you.
The goal for me is to try out DWC, and a Flood & Drain (Ebb & Flow) set up. Both need the nutrients to stay aerated at all times, and the temps low.
With the air pump being kept cool in the fridge, I can aerate and cool 6 buckets/reservoirs with the manifold that is on there. I also have an 18 port manifold if I wanted to add 2 air stones in a reservoir. So it is scalable, which is nice.
This resembles a setup I’ve seen before where the coil was in the fridge and nutrients were cooled when circulated through it. How much it cools is determined by fridge temp, length of coil and flow rate . . .
