Nice little set up! I use the zen reef dual heater mounts already and love them. If I hadn’t just gotten new heaters I’d give these a try. I also run an ink bird on my quarantine tank and it’s done quite well. Good job BRS!
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The blue InkBird does all those things already. The green one will also do .3° temp swing if you switch it to Celcius
It appears to be an inkbird, no? Just putting new branding on it. But I would assume same internal quality.
What’s the difference with this one:
-Ours has a replaceable temp probe, while theirs does not. The probe is a primary failure point as they will just wear out over time. When that ones probe goes out, the whole unit is junk.
-Zack@BRS
I have two green Inkbirds and one blue one. They've been running for combined total about five years and I haven't had a single problem. I have changed one temp probe on one green one because it developed a rust spot, in the future I will switch them to the newer plastic probe type.
IMO they are pretty decent units and BRS seems to have combined the best of both units into one. My only real complaint with the blue one is it won't audibly alert you if temp goes out of range like the green one will - I don't know if BRS addressed that or not.
0.3 degrees swing Celsius is 0.54 degrees swing Fahrenheit which is much better than a one degree swing that all my inkbird controllers have but I would still rather have 0.3 . The other two benefits would be when you order an inkbird online they often time show the all plastic probe but when it shows up at my house it comes with the metal probe I would much rather have the plastic one because it's completely submersible the metal one is not. and the number one reason it's worth paying an extra $15 is because BRS will actually stand behind it and warranty it if needed. I had a defective temperature probe on an ink bird controller that I ordered about a year ago and I rapidly figured out that the only warranty I had on it was the 45 day amazon Prime warranty I had no response from incurred at all and had to send the whole controller back to amazon when all I really needed was a 50 Cent temperature probe.The blue InkBird does all those things already. The green one will also do .3° temp swing if you switch it to Celcius
Replacing the controller every year is only going to be necessary if you keep a very tight temperature swing causing the internal relay to have to cycle many many more times than I would argue is necessary. That being said if it's a real strict concern for someone it's a pretty basic procedure to open that inkbird up and unsolder and solder in a new relay, I think the relays cost less than a dollar on eBay. Or you can spend 10 to $20 on a much better relay get one with a much much higher duty cycle and probably not have to worry about it for years and yearsso replacing the temp probe yearly is probably needed, but the controller itself also needs to be replaced yearly too?
the heater is good for 3 years so that's cool i guess, but eh. i guess if quality is really good it's worth it, but hard to see how this isn't inkbird + finnex titanium heater? inkbird for the same price gives you wifi options too..
We're definitely not trying to hide that this is a product developed with Inkbird.
I'm a huge BRS fanboy and like the changes they made but Inkbird just came out with the 306A which has wifi and two temp probes so you have a lot of what you're asking for. If BRS had one of these with replaceable probes I'd be all on it.What I would like to see is a redundant designed heater system. 2 heaters, 3 thermocouples voting designed, with failure detection. Sure it will be 2x as much but when you are 3K+ into a tank that seems like a minor cost
-Ours has a 3 degree temp alarm, meaning if you set your temp to 78 and it gets to 81, you get an audible warning and the heater shuts off. Theirs will only alarm if the temp goes outside of the units temp setting range, which is -58F to 210F--not super helpful.
The normal 308S does not normally have a replaceable or aquarium grade probe on it. However, the 308SA is a heater/chiller combo and can only run a single heater in one of the outlets. Still, not a bad option for those in that situation.
Would it be better to use a heater with an internal thermostat (set 2-3 degrees higher than desired) with the controller providing main control of heater? Acting as layer of redundancy.....think one of your old videos mentioned this, so was surprised that the BRS heater did not have an internal thermostat.