Tank heaters

I have 2 tanks, 15g FW and a new 75g SW. Usually I don't need heaters for the tanks here in San Antonio, but with winter coming the temp in the tanks is dropping It not so much the drop as the fluctuations that I'm concerned about.

I've heard of nightmare stories about heaters that get stuck or otherwise break, and cook or freeze the fish. I dont think i need anything fancy, since the winters here are short and mild. Can anyone recommend a reliable, brand or style of heater for my tanks?

DarkHorse

 

Hydor THEO Submersible Aquarium Heaters

 

i love the marineland brands.

here is a link to one
Marineland Visi-Therm Deluxe Submersible Heater Aquarium Heaters


this is a very durable heater

pick the style you like best how them you can't go wrong

 

I use marineland stealth heaters. While I can't say that they are the most reliable, I have had 3 replaced after failure, one due to catastrophic failure that took out a fish and melted, causing me to do several water changes and run LOTS of carbon... Marineland's customer support is impeccable, however. They replaced all three heaters with the newest version, and paid for the replacement cost of my fish, the carbon and sent me a bucket of RC salt for the water changes. Since they really took care of the problem, I was pleased that they stand behind their products, which come with a lifetime guarantee.

The other two heaters just eventually failed to turn on. This was after having all three heaters for a period of about four years in a FW tank and then 1.5 years in the reef tank.

Suggestions for using ANY heater:

1. Run your heaters on their own power strip and make sure the power strip has a breaker on it. Power strips like this are cheap and can save you from a bigger failure. This way in case one heater were to fail and short, it won't take out the breaker that all of your other equipment is on. If it does short and trip the power strip breaker, you will hopefully catch it in time so that the temperature doesn't drop too far (which can take a while in larger tanks).

2. Run a ground probe in your tank so that the water is properly grounded.

3. Use a thermometer that is accurate and easy to check, and make sure you look at it often. This way if something is amiss, you can attend to it right away.

4. In smaller tanks, it's fine to run just one heater. In larger tanks, it may be necessary and better to run two or more heaters. Having several heaters means that all of the demand is not being placed on one unit. I find that running several heaters also stabilizes the temperature.


With two large heaters, and fans that come on with my lights, I have successfully stabilized my temp swings to just one degree throughout the entire day.

I like that the new stealth heaters have red/green indicator lights on them, so that I can see that they are working also...

 

One of the main things is to not run the heater out of water. If you are doing a water change, make sure the water level is never below it. Some of the marineland stealth heaters (I think second version) exploded and it was tracked to that.

 

I plan on putting the heater in my Refugium, that should keep it under water.


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After fighing with Heaters and fluctuating temps, I now have mine hooked to a Dual Temp Controller. it does the Chiller and the heaters. set the thermostats on teh heaters to 80 and the controller to 78. this way I have a much better piece of electronics controlling the temp of the tank and not the thermostat in the heater itself.

 

I don't recommend these heaters. I had two fail in the on position within 2 months of buying them; caught both before they killed anything. I did have a heater kill a tank about a year ago, though. I just bought me a RKL and I'll never run a heater without a controller again; it's 95 bucks and the way I see it, it's not a matter of if your heater is gonna fail, but when.

 

This is what i use.
ViaAqua Titanium Heater

 

Seems like running without a heater has risks, but it's more risky to have a heater.

With all the nightmare stories of heaters getting stuck and cooking fish I think I'll just go without. I mean the temp never drops below the safe range and at the most drops 4 deg at night when the lights are off. The average is 2 deg overnight.




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