It got really cold here lately, down around 0F, supposedly -7F with windchill to -17F. I never saw any colder than 0F on our thermometer, though. Our 3 gal bucket with vertical nipples and with the K&H 250W stock tank deicer froze up the nipples in this cold. The bucket is in the first run, which is enclosed on 2 sides and partially protected by a large shed on the side where wind would be coming from, but we haven't had more than a very slight breeze. I bought a 100W fish tank heater at Petco for $30. I would have bought a 75W one as someone else here suggested, but they had 50W, 100W, 150W+ and decided to err on the conservative side. I cleaned out the bucket, refilled with water, set the fish heater in the bucket, waited 15 minutes, then hung it in the first run outside. In the morning, the water was warm but the nipples where frozen. No, actually they were stuck. I realized that when I cleaned out the bucket inside the warm house I never checked to see that the nipples were functioning. We have fairly hard water and I wonder if they somehow got stuck due to minerals combined with being frozen? I don't know. But I pressed up on the metal nipple part and wiggled it several times before it broke loose and then worked as normal again. It hasn't frozen up or otherwise gotten stuck since. It seems overkill to heat the water to 76F, but it's working at least. It probably doesn't heat it that warm, but I bet the tank heater is going 24/7 in this type of cold. Yes, I had bought the stock tank heater based upon what I had read on here. Maybe those folks aren't dealing with quite the same kind of cold. I wished it had worked, but it didn't. Fortunately it's been less than 30 days since I bought the K&H deicer so I'll return it to Amazon if I can only find the original packaging!
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