Water temps, what is the hottest, what is the coldest, what is the best temp?

BenFranklin said:

I would love to flume if I had the room! Believe me, if I had another 2 foot to my ceilings... I'd have ebb and flow or aeroponics set up.

Click to expand...

Yes height is an issue lol. About 26" taken up with setup.

I try to keep mine a bit above 65 F.

I know a chart has been posted about DO, but Ive seen some serious slowdowns in growth if it goes below 65. Sure you have more DO at lower temps but the growth slows if you go too cold.

I use a mazzei air injector in my reservoir run by a mag drive pump.
Reservoir 15 gallons
Mazzei injector 1058
Mag drive 9.5
Dissolved oxygen 10.2
Water temp 68-72

GrowerGoneWild said:

I try to keep mine a bit above 65 F.

I know a chart has been posted about DO, but Ive seen some serious slowdowns in growth if it goes below 65. Sure you have more DO at lower temps but the growth slows if you go too cold.

Click to expand...

This is closest to mine, but apparently my temps wander around a bit more than most.

I run about 125 gallons in my RDWC, in eight 27 gallon tuffboxes. The same chiller that cools my res/RDWC system also cools the rest of the room via air to water heat exchangers.

Recently one of my chillers quit working, leaving me with only one running unit during hot summer weather. This means in practice that the unit works harder during the afternoon when it's warmest out, but falls behind anyway. The water in the whole cooling system begins to warm slightly, thus becoming warmer than the RDWC water. The rdwc systems then act as a cold storage reserve for the cooling system to keep things manageable during the day, and then catch up during cool overnight hours.

My RDWC temps this wander from 66 on up to as high as 72 by lights out without trouble, though the usual change is only two degrees or so. In so doing, my little two Ton window mount chiller keeps up with all the cooling needs of six to eight kW of BARE BULBS at night and four to six kW more bare bulbs during the day, even while the temperatures outside climb into the nineties.

If it sounds like I'm using hundreds of gallons of nutrient water as a storage bank of cold water, to spend when it's hot and renew overnight, you've got the right idea. If you understand this means you can run less tons of cooling over larger heat loads more efficiently, you'll understand why it saves money.