Any Recommendations on a 500 watt heater?

FLSharkvictim · Dec 9, 2016

The coldest weekend of the year and both of my heaters have crashed sometime earlier in the day... I'm glad I took a peak over at my temp that sitting at 76 and dropping, or I possibly could of lost some sps, lps and some fish especially my Powder Blue...Thank god i have a small 200 watt one to get me through until I get get another one... I wont have to worry about this ever again come Monday. I will be hooking up my new Apex Classic Controller...

Anyways, I read nothing but good review on this heater!
JBL - True Temp - 500 Watt (100-160 Gallon) Titanium Heater System.

bevo5 · Dec 9, 2016

I wonder if two 250s would give you more protection? Then if one fails you've got a backup. I don't know what is better. Just thinking.

FLSharkvictim · Dec 9, 2016

I decided to go with two Cobalt Aquatics Neo-Therm 150 Watt Aquarium Heater w/ LED Display along with a brand new Apex Classic controller.. No more worrying about my tank crashing on me, since the Neptune app will send you instant notifications if there are any issues what so ever, sort of like the one that just happened with both of my won bother heaters crashing.

Cobalt-Aquatics-Neo-Therm-25-Watt-Aquarium-Heater-w-LED-Display-99.jpg

SR Aquaristik · Dec 10, 2016

Check out the picture of our prototype 300 W heater, completely in line, digital and electricity has no contact with the water. Hope to launch later this year. What do you guys think would be a fair cost for this type of heater? Would something like this interest you? I run this on my 190 and it seams to be maintaining the temp just fine...

mcarroll · Dec 10, 2016

(Typed all this hours ago and didn't his send....)

500w seems to be the least reliable class of heaters, but that's also the class that most folks buy as a titanium heater. It could be mostly the titanium models causing the trend, I dunno.

Is this for your 120g? 500w is overkill for a single unit anyway.

I'd probably go with one right-sized heater in the tank, and one right-sized heater in the sump, such as this combo:

and

I really like these heaters....lifetime warranty is nice. They're called "Precision" heaters instead of "Visi-therm" like they used to be, but they perform the same as far as I can tell. I've got several – by quantity, almost the only heater I've ever used – and some are in the 15-20 year old range.

If you prefer Eheim/Jaeger...

The 250-watt for the display and still 100-watts for the sump:

and

SR Aquaristik · Dec 10, 2016

I totally agree, oversizing a heater is always a risk, if something goes wrong you can quickly over heat your tank. Ambient temperature is also a huge factor in determining what wattage you should choose.