heating tanks...

[nil8u]

Is there anyone that keeps there tanks at a certain temp all the time. As in leaving the pumps and heaters going overnight. It seems to be very time consuming to heat the tanks every morning from 40 degrees. It's cold here in UT. Is this a big fire hazard?

[moto-chrome]

I keep my tanks (30 gal each) at 110 all the time. My 300 watt heaters are made of glass so they are perfectly safe. More importantly the tanks which are basically just large plastic garbage cans, are insulated using cheap bubble plastic used to insulate your household hot water tank.

Pumps well that depends on the solution. If you're doing Flash copper you can leave it in all the time. For Nickel the pump is replaced by an aquarium air pump with flexible plastic hose. This runs on a timer 15 min every hour proper temperature distribution. Pumps do not last in acid copper so this one is tougher to keep uniformly warm just like the chrome solution.

[nil8u]

Where do I get these tank heaters? The heaters caswel supplies with the kit are 300W and I am using them on a 5gal kit and it takes forever to heat them up. I have found 300W glass heaters at petco but they only go up to 90 deg. I thought I could maybe modify them but what do you suggest?

[nil8u]

also I have found that the rubber on the end of my heater in the chrome tank starts to disentigrate after only a few hours of being in the tank. I deffinitely want to go glass in the chrome. Any help to find these things would be awesome. Thanks, Lance