Re: Substrate Heating

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Re: Substrate Heating
From: paul at eisusa_com (Paul Nicholson)
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 09:15:03 -0700

James Purchase <jpp at inforamp_net> wrote:

>In both "The Optimum Aquarium" and in George Booth's series of articles
>on his plant tanks, a great deal of emphasis is placed on substrate
>heating to promote nutrient uptake by plants in the tank.
>
>At the time, I thought that this manifold method "should" work, but was
>involved in other things and couldn't try it out for myself. I saw
>several posts which claimed that not enough heat could be transferred
>using the most likely material, PVC piping.

While PVC has a low coefficient of heat transfer, the gravel packed around
it also has a low transfer of heat coefficient. You won't need to add a lot
of heat because a lot of heat won't be leaving. PVC will work fine. Simply
raising the temperature of the water inside the PVC will cancel out the low
heat transfer anyway.

Paul