Heater Question

Ok I have a 180 gal reef tank but a roughly ~400 gallon system. The DT is in my living room while all the sumps, refugium, etc is down in the basement. I currently have three 300 watt heaters that I use. Two in the DT and one down in my basement sump. (They are all run from an Apex that I just purchased)

What I am seeking advice for is the following. I would like to get rid of the clutter of heaters especially the two in my DT as I dont like seeing them in it.
I am trying to figure out what heaters to buy (I currently have misc brands of heaters I have collected of over the years)

I have no experience with in line heaters to know if they are any good or not. I have thought about adding one inline heater to my DT so it would not be seen and then adding a bigger watt heater to my sump. (500W...1000W???) My problem mainly comes in the winter when my basement is substantially cooler than the rest of my house and trying to maintain a constant water temp there so it doesnt pump cold water into my DT tank.

So I guess my question is two fold.....I am looking for setup ideas as well as specific heaters to buy to complete setup.

Thanks in advance for any input!!

 

Any ideas???

 

Why not just keep all the heaters in the Sump? Thats what I do.

 

Then would you recommend upgrading two a 500 or 1000 W heater as I don't want 3 heaters in the sump

 

Rule of thumb, 3 to 5 watts per gallon.
400 gallons x 5 is 2000.

Two 1k heaters should be plenty.

I see you only use 900 total currently, do you see a large fluctuation in temp during cold and hot variations?

 

I used to but I actually have three more heaters that I would just plug in the winter down in the basement. But even though my variation has been greatly reduced with the help of my apex, I am wanting to do a much better job with limiting the number of heaters I have to run and thus reducing the chances of something going wrong. Once had a heater issue that fried my tank as water reached in the high 90s. Part of the reason why I got the apex.