Heater advice

[Fred2482]

I am in process of completing my 180 build and have ran into an issue. The build is a little over complex as it includes a fish room that is intended to support another large aquarium (approx 500 gallons). The 180 is in my office with about 40' horizontal and 15' vertical between it and the sump which is in the basement. Everything is plumbed and working nicely however I have added 2 - 300 watt Eheim Jager heaters to the sump and I can not get water temp over 76.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Not that 76 is bad, however the heaters are acting inconsistent (set at 81 and turning off at 76?) and I would like to set at 78 and verify the heaters shut off , then add cold RO water and watch them turn on before adding a controller. I have calibrated them both a few times, not that I am perfect at calibrating, however they should at least be close. I have read that searched around and it seems these heaters are plenty capable. I dont want to blast the heaters at 95 in the case my house warms up in the summer and I cook everything in the tank, or start killing my apex outlet. Not even sure it would raise the temp. Are these incapable of this size setup? Should I replace with 2 more powerful, add a 3rd? I have added some details below and would appreciate any help on this!

180 gallon tank only water (measuring seems about 160 gallons of water)
25 gallon sump
100 gallon "sump" about 40 gallons currently
Room temp = 70 degrees Fahrenheit

 

[lilgrounchuck]

What’s the room temp in the office and where the sump is? Is the sump in closed off section of the basement? Is the office closed off from the rest of the house? If they’re segregated and cool, you could add space heaters to raise the room temps up a bit. The smaller the gaps those tank heaters have to close, the better.

 

[Fred2482]

What’s the room temp in the office and where the sump is? Is the sump in closed off section of the basement? Is the office closed off from the rest of the house? If they’re segregated and cool, you could add space heaters to raise the room temps up a bit. The smaller the gaps those tank heaters have to close, the better.

The office is currently 69 degrees. I will have to check the basement, yesterday they were both around 70! The fish room is not closed yet as I am leaving 1 wall unfinished until I decide how to install the new tank.

 

[ingchr1]

Just for clarification, the temperature in the tank is 76? What is the temperature in the sump at the return pump?

Initial thoughts are temperature drop associated with the long pipe run. They may need to be set higher to over come it, or maybe they aren't enough. Hopefully someone with a similar situation can provide some input.

 

[Albertan22]

That’s not nearly enough wattage. I had a similar problem when I set up my 180 (with 75 gallon sump) a few months ago. The LFS told me 600 Watts would be fine but it took 1100 Watts of heaters before I could hold 78 degrees. It seems quite ridiculous since the 120g I upgraded from only needed 400 Watts.

 

[Albertan22]

If you do some Google searching there seems to be a rule of thumb out there that you need 5 Watts per gallon.

 

[Albertan22]

Sorry for spamming the thread... Regarding your heaters acting erratically, it’s because they are undersized. They’re basically running all the time because they can’t get the water to temperature and there is some kind of safety cutoff built into them to prevent them from burning up. They cutting for a certain amount of time then kick back in. I have the same heaters, same wattage even, and ran into the exact same problem. I had mine running through an apex though and was able to see what they were doing power wise. I added two more heaters to get my wattage up and they started behaving normally.

 

[Fred2482]

thank you all for the comments!

@ingchr1 the entire loop is 76.

This was my fear, although Eheim states they are rated for this size tank, they are not! So my next question would be what is the best option to move forward. 4 - 19" 300 what heaters is a lot of space! Would that be the best option or should I just get 2 larger wattage heaters?

This is crazy as the Apex energy bar is max rated at 15 amps and 1500 watts, this would potentially mean I would have to utilized an entire energy bar for heating???

 

[ingchr1]

When you got to 76, did you have the thermostats turned all the way up or were they set at 81?

As a test (if not done already) dial them up, one then both, to see just how high they will heat the tank to. You can then take those numbers to determine the watt per degree rise need for your system. Use this to figure out how many watts needed to heat from the ambient you want to 78.

You can also verify the heater wattage through you Apex.

Also how did you calibrate them? I've tried calibrating in a 5 gallon bucket with a pump, but found it to not be that precise. I think it has to do with the fact that it takes time for the mechanical thermostat to actually heat up/down and operate. This is where the actual water temperature is over/under shooting the heater setpoint. And this was with 125W heaters, it will be worse at wattage goes up.

 

[Fred2482]

When you got to 76, did you have the thermostats turned all the way up or were they set at 81?

As a test (if not done already) dial them up, one then both, to see just how high they will heat the tank to. You can then take those numbers to determine the watt per degree rise need for your system. Use this to figure out how many watts needed to heat from the ambient you want to 78.

You can also verify the heater wattage through you Apex.

Also how did you calibrate them? I've tried calibrating in a 5 gallon bucket with a pump, but found it to not be that precise. I think it has to do with the fact that it takes time for the mechanical thermostat to actually heat up/down and operate. This is where the actual water temperature is over/under shooting the heater setpoint. And this was with 125W heaters, it will be worse at wattage goes up.

I had them at 81, originally I had them at 78 and it gave me a 74 degree temp. Bumped to 81 and now 76. I can dial them up to see if I can get something to hit the 78 degree mark, however my house temp fluctuates during the seasons. During summer when the office is more like 72, I don't want the apex getting beat up by turning off the heaters so many times as well as I do not want to dial them down every season change. My goal with 2 of them (besides redundancy) was for them to be able to keep a consistent 78 no matter if the house is 69 or 74 degrees.

Calibration was a pain, took several tests and over an hour to get it completed and as I stated above probably not perfect. The sink in my fish room fits one of these horizontally so I used it as it was less than 5 gallons and faster results. I basically measured temp of water to 75, plugged in heater set for 78. It would come on and after it went off i checked temp of water. Adjusted red bar to accommodate, ran some cold water (drained some to reduce overall water) and tested again. Did this about 4 times with each heater. I was circulating the water constantly. The issue is the slow on off reaction so it was by far best effort, however I am sure it is sufficient. After running the calibrated heaters for a day at 78 (actual water temp 74), I bumped them to 81 (actual water temp 76) to see if I could get the desired 78. I could try setting both at 85, however I feel like if they can not heat all of the water to the temp set, there is an underlining issue. The issue seems to be they just simply are not strong enough..

 

[Albertan22]

thank you all for the comments!

@ingchr1 the entire loop is 76.

This was my fear, although Eheim states they are rated for this size tank, they are not! So my next question would be what is the best option to move forward. 4 - 19" 300 what heaters is a lot of space! Would that be the best option or should I just get 2 larger wattage heaters?

This is crazy as the Apex energy bar is max rated at 15 amps and 1500 watts, this would potentially mean I would have to utilized an entire energy bar for heating???

I found with mine that the two 300W heaters worked just fine when I had them in the DT while I was filling the tank and mixing saltwater, but once I turned on the pumps and moved the heaters to the sump they didn’t cut it. I ended up adding another 200W Eheim and a 300W aqueon heater as I just didn’t have room to keep adding Eheim heaters and didn’t have room to replace with large wattage Eheim jagers because of their length. If I hadn’t invested so much cash in undersized heaters and were starting over I would go with two large wattage heaters of some other brand that was short enough to fit in the sump.

Regarding the apex, take a look at your setup and see what really needs plugging into the apex. I found I was able to plug in my heaters, 2 T5 channels from my hybrid fixture, and my skimmer and still have one plug left over. My LEDs, and dosing pump are controlled via wifi so do t need plugging into the EB832 and I picked up a COR20 pump for my return that also doesn’t need plugging into the EB832 as it is controlled via AquaBus. What I’m saying is that I was able to use another regular power bar for all the stuff that was controlled by other ways than the EB832 switching on and off power. One thing that did throw me is that I had to get an electrician to put in a new dedicated 20amp service to the tank because the power draw of everything was way more than I had planned for. The tank already had water in it so it was a real pain, I wish I had done it earlier.