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Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V3 #642
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 16:56:38 -0800
> From: Julius Odian <uodiaj00 at umail_ucsb.edu>
> Subject: Re: Aquatic Plants Digest V3 #641
>
> Regarding heater cables and convection currents, I have used some cheap
> heater cables that worked pretty well. However when I heard the ballast
> idea, I started thinking about the purpose of heating cables. Isn't the
> purpose to provide a flow of nutrients to the plant roots? Well simply
> heating the bottom of the tank should cause the water to heat and rise like
> a furnace heats air in a room and the air rises. Thus colder water carrying
> fresh nutrients should sink to the bottom. That would be a case for using
> simple low wattage reptile heat pads. Maybe I'm missing something in which
> case fill me in.
>
> Julius Odian
Somewhere in the archives, or perhaps on George Booth's site, I seem to
recall George discussing his views on the different effects of low
wattage
vs. high wattage substrate heating, and, if I recall correctly, the
difference
amounted to the heat moving through the water vs. the water itself
moving (is
that conduction vs. convection?). Anyway, I thought that you might be
able to
experiment with this by introducing some sort of dye in a lower layer of
the
substrate, and compare the color change in the water column both with
and
without different heat sources. Has anybody tried something like this
or have
comments on such an experiment?
Bob