anyone ever use a submersible aquarium heater before in a hanging waterer bucket

[SammyRouen]

Hey all!
Need a little help i just bought a Tetra Submersible Heater the lowest watt they offer (50 watt). I have a Home Depot hanging bucket waterer for my girls. Does anyone have any experience with this device in your waterers in freezing temps or something similar?
Thanks!

 

[pdirt]

Lots of people use those. I used one last winter and it works great. Just NEVER let the water level get lower than a couple inches above the heater. And make sure your waterer is secured so it can never be knocked over, such as hang it from a rope. Lastly, if you need to use an extension cord, get the thickest gauge you can get and only use one made for the outdoors and keep the cord up high so that your chickens could never peck at it.

 

[Toddrick]

Those keep the water a lot warmer than it needs to be though. A bird bath de-icer would be more appropriate I think.

 

[pdirt]

Those keep the water a lot warmer than it needs to be though. A bird bath de-icer would be more appropriate I think.

Yes, I agree, but it depends. My experience has been the submersible aquarium heater works well with vertical nipples, it kept them from freezing to below 0F. The deicer (which doesn't heat the water as much) I've used works well with the horizontal nipples, down to -9F, but didn't work with the vertical nipples below (I think) 20F. I don't recall the exact temp, but it didn't work for the kind if cold we have around here.

To the OP, what kind of temps are you dealing within winter where you live?

 

[Settle4nuthin]

Hey all!
Need a little help i just bought a Tetra Submersible Heater the lowest watt they offer (50 watt). I have a Home Depot hanging bucket waterer for my girls. Does anyone have any experience with this device in your waterers in freezing temps or something similar?
Thanks!

I am using 2 50Watts sub heaters this winter in a 5 gallon bucket with 4 horizontal nipples. the temp dipped down to neg 12 last week. water in bucket and nipples never froze. there was water that dripped off the nipples on the ground that was froze but the sub heaters worked flawlessly.