" wrote in message
om...
Will it hurt your tank? No, but neither will sending me 20$.

Hi Tom,

:-) Actually substrate heaters may "hurt" some set ups in hot climates
due
to adding more heat. Aquarium coolers are not inexpensive.

Yea, tell me about it:-)

If Adam does decide to install the substrate heater in his tank I would
just
give him one advice: make sure you secure it very well to the bottom.
Don't
rely on the suction cups alone.

Yes, even the best suction cups, which are made by Dupla are sujected
to movement. Then you do not get the micro currents that Dupla suggest
help.
If currents to the substrate do help, then why not like the RFUG I
used for a about 20 years also not do the same thing? Does the same
thing as the cables, just at a higher flow rate, grows plants
great/the same as cables did over the same time period. I made my own
grill from heat resistent plastic to keep the distance from the tank
bottom the same.

Many folks turn their cables off over the summer months, Folks in SG
don't/cannot use them at all yet routinely set up beautiful tanks.

George Booth runs his AC at 72F so he has a "Dupla" air conditioner
I think he and I beat that horse to death on the APD over the years.
I used reptile heating pads on the bottom of the tanks and I would
certainly argue that these do the same the thing as a cable system.
The increa bacterial reminerilization of nutrients due to temp
increase could account for slight differences rather than flux.

But substrates and their role in planted aquaria are of great interest
to me on a number of levels.

I've had:

High flow(RFUG's)
Low flow (Cables)
No flow (Just gravels/sand)

over the years to look at the role of flux in/out of the substrate.
No flow, like Claus's discussions with me, produced the best growth of
any of these three systems with root submersed plants.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Check this site out:

http://aquaticconcepts.thekrib.com/Shc/index.htm

It deals with your assumption of using reptile heating pads instead of
coils, as well as many other issues. Personally, I'm on the pro heating
coils side, but that's probably cause I was able to make them myself for
almost no cost to me, if I had to pay for them, I might have spend money on
something else. However, I do think that they can be useful in a planted
tank, especially in the allowing the tank to grow for long periods of time,
however, they will do absolutely nothing to enhance growth, so asking for
proof of how heating coils helped a tank ... there really is no proof,
except someone telling you that their plants grew for years and years in a
tank with coils, while another tank that didn't have them needed to be
redone more often. Which is basically what the guys at Aquatic Concepts
give as the proof. Make sense to me.

Harry