DWC water chillers

Your looking at $300. I didn't want to spend that so I insulated the buckets and bigger air pump really helped. I would take out 2 gallons twice a day and chill it in the fridge and add it back in and would drop the temps from 78 to 68-72. You can use hydrogaurd and be safe in the Temps around 80 still. Just keep a close eye for root rot. If you take 2 liters and fill them with 1/2 cup salt and water they make nice ice packs to drop in your res. Keep a rotation in the frezzer and that should be a cheap alt. Good luck.
 
I used an old water cooler to make a free chiller for my DWC tub. Took the plastic parts out of the cooling tank at the top so I could put a coil of 3/8" tubing in it. The tubing is hooked to a fountain pump that is sitting in the bottom of the tub and circulates the nutes up through the coil in the cooler tank then back to the tub. The cooler tank is filled with automotive anti-freeze or it freezes up. I have a timer on the cooler as it would chill the nutes too much. A blanket of white, house insulation around the tub helps maintain an even temperature. The white stuff doesn't lose fibers like the pink stuff and a length of bailing wire around it holds it on nicely. Pics in my grow thread. Cost me $14 dollars for the fountain pump. I already had 20' of the clear tubing and was gifted the water cooler. I also used a glue gun to put mosquito netting around the intake of the fountain pump to keep the roots from getting in there.

I figure it could handle 2 tubs or a large rez and keep the temps down to 65F no problem. It's usually at 63 - 66 with the cooler on 15 minutes every hour so if the cooler ran full time it could do a lot more. There's about 12' of tubing coiled up in there so less tubing would lower the efficiency too but it's not hard to tweak the timer to get a steady temp in the tub. I originally had the timer on the fountain pump but the nutes froze in the tubing and shut down the flow so the pump runs full time and I switched the timer to the cooler.

I wrapped the cooler tank with that white insulation as well then did the tub with it after these pics were taken.

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Preventing root rot is paramount. By the time you spot the beginning of rot it's almost always too late unless you take drastic measures to stop it like flooding everything with peroxide. Whatever you use to fix it will stress the plants really bad as will the rot. Cooler temps is the best way to go so it never starts.

Hope that helps. :)

L8r

 
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