To Chill Or Not To Chill? Water chiller's

Ok so ive decided to go hydroponic/areoponic my ? is this? how hard is it to keep your res temps under control? do you really need chillers and or heaters? if so what temps should they be at?

CLONE
VEG
FLOWER

what should the temps be in those stages and how much of a chiller do you need to do a 20 gal res. like the aquamist system were the plants grow into the water,or like a AERO/DWC hybrid something along those lines. Ill be using 2x32 plant aquamist systems 15 5gal DWC's and my cloner is a 40 site homemade DIY i made myself thats 1 bad mother and my mothers will allso be dwc.

i am assuming keeping the temps in indivual 5gal DWC buckets is the least of ones to worry about,because that would take a chiller for each bucket right?

heres a couple links to a couple i looked at for just incase. about how much will each of these chill?

http://www.hydrowholesale.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=hydro&Product_Code=IPAC&Category_Code=h2o

http://www.hydrowholesale.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=hydro&Product_Code=HGCH1-10&Category_Code=h2o

thanks for the help everyone ill need it? lol!

If you're going to be doing aeroponics you definitely should get a chiller. With that type of system, the margin for error is extremely small, and IMO, it's not worth taking a chance. In any other type of system, I'd say you don't need it though, except in extremely hot environments.

its actually a hybrid areo/dwc system there wont be a seperate res it will be one that they grow in

Hi,

Yea I went through this myself. I just started a spray or aero system and needed to cool a res. Small one though so I looked at that stick. 50 watts of cooling power didn't sound like a lot. The second one I think would be good for a res up to 30 gal.

I guess it depends on the ambient temp of the res. and how well it is insulated.
But from what I have found res temps are about 5° less then where they are.

You can get about another 5° by blowing air across it but thats about it.

The temp you want to hit is 68°
It has to do with micro bacteria or something. I see plants respond better to cooler water on a hot day.
I have to believe the nutrient uptake is affected too.

But to hit 68° when the room is 75 lets say would not be hard to do without a chiller.
Now if your starting temp is 85° thats a different story.

I ended up tearing apart a dorm fridge and sticking the cooling unit in the res.
Hell I can get it down to 45° but thats way to cold. My temps are about 80° so i needed to drop 12° and I got that no problem. anywhere between 65 and 72° and your good.

I've decided not to grow anymore in the heat of summer because I just don't want to have to deal with heat and res temps. It is so much easier the rest of the year.

Alot of the heat problems in the reservoir people run into is having a submersible pump in it running 24/7. That can really heat the water up so there are ways to deal with it without getting a chiller( although a chiller is a great way to go if you can ). One thing you can do is get a recycle timer and run pump just a couple minutes at a time but the pump won't last as long due to start-stops. Another thing you can do is get an inline pump and keep it outside of reservoir. If your grow room temps are under control and it gets fairly cool when the lights are off it should be fine the water will stay closer to the average temp.

Constantly circulating water will help also, i have a verticle hydro system for veggies in my back yard with water temps in the upper 80s, works like a charm, outside temps around 95

I purchased the Sunleaves Aquachill 1/10th HP for my 15 gallon E&F reservoir: http://www.wormsway.com/detail.aspx?t=prod&sku=SA200&AC=1

I started using it about midway through my PPP / White Widow grow, and it was worth the money just to not have to keep changing out frozen bottles of water. I feel the chiller eliminated many previous reservoir chemistry / critter problems, as it keeps the nutrients at a constant 68F allowing for increased dissolved O2 in the mix.

Here's a picture of my most recent Jock Horror grow at 4 weeks flower:





I think the chiller will definitely improve your yields.

Good luck with your grow!

bump: any more suggestions on the chillers or heaters?

the reason for having the temps at 65-68F is this is the ideal temp that holds the most dissolved oxygen, with warm climates, unless you can maintain your room temps with an a/c a chiller is a good idead, think of it as insurance, also in the future if you want to go larger units, aswell as if running co2 you can go up to 95F room temps, with a chiller you will see substantial growth...i picked up on ebay a polar bear cc-50 for $399, its a 1/3HP and i just love it, also when picking out a chiller get a bigger/stronger one than you think you need, the manufacturers say they cool x amount of degrees dont listen to them, they dont take into acount you might have a couple thousands watts of light above your rez

http://www.aquastealth.com/13hpaquariumchiller.aspx
this is the unit i have, i must have gotten lucky, the ebay price a few months ago was 390

thanks for the advice bro

ok im still stuck on this shit and my res/bucket temps are stuck at 75. but im also having trouble keeping my room temp down also. one of my biggest problems is the black bucket lids/ res lids. but i cant paint them white till i harvest wats already growing i can only tape/lay/put poly white side up over all the places i can till harvest

Can you hook a chiller directly to ebb and flow system or do you
Have to run new hoses? Will it actually push the water back to Res?

Can you hook a chiller directly to ebb and flow system or do you
Have to run new hoses? Will it actually push the water back to Res?

I've never even checked a res temp and never had a problem. But I have plenty of AC. I don't think a 75 res temp is really a problem. Some are getting carried away with res temps like thinking you have to stand there with pH up in one hand and pH down in the other to keep it right at 5.8 all the time.

really the people that mainly need it are people that run true aero ponics systems i have the aero flo 20 but it has a different custom bigger res the one it came with was small and a pain in the ass

hey i have a good solution thats cheap gatorade bottles twice a day depending on howw big your res. is depends on how many... frozen gatorade bottles have always worked for me you just have to be on it and not forget the water start losing oxygen onces it goes over a certain degree.. i tried keeping my temps between 60-72

jackdirty said:

hey i have a good solution thats cheap gatorade bottles twice a day depending on howw big your res. is depends on how many... frozen gatorade bottles have always worked for me you just have to be on it and not forget the water start losing oxygen onces it goes over a certain degree.. i tried keeping my temps between 60-72

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yea we all no about using frozen bottles but they dont make chillers for them to just sit on the shelf and be expensive if you read the whole thread youll see what i mean. its the whhen do i need 1 why would i need 1 will it matter really that the thread is about

Water bottles are better unless you are full enviromental control. A chiller can only lower the temp of the res so much if its rasing all day a chiller wont even help that much just slow it down. You have to get your room temps in check then figure out if you need a chiller not the other way around.

If its to hot a chiller will only drop like 3 degrees if the water is constantly climbing in temp it will still be climbing with a cooler. If you cant keep your room at a constant temp water chiller isnt gonna help like you think unless you buy big bad ass ones not ones made for fish tanks.