HEATER ISSUES & FAVORITE HEATERS! Prevent a tank crash with good heater knowledge!

[Calm Blue Ocean]

I had an Eheim heater that seemed to have either a faulty thermostat or possibly the ring that you turned to adjust it was faulty. Either way, it would cycle on and off, so it wasn't stuck in that way, but it persisted in way overheating my tank no matter how I turned it down.

Now I'm using one of the BRS titanium heaters with an InkBird Wi-Fi controller. I'd feel even better with one more layer of redundancy but at least with this I can monitor temperature from anywhere and should get an alarm if something goes wrong. I'm happy with this setup so far!

Funny thing is that I have probably a $10 fixed temp Aqueon heater in my 10g tank and it keeps perfect temperature. No adjustments, no controllers, and it just sits happily at 78F. I really love how this tank lets me keep things so simple.

My biggest question about heaters after my experience with the original heater is the size that we typically put in our tanks. I've always put a heater sized according to the manufacturer but I'm starting to suspect that we often oversize our heaters. Boiling my tank is one of my major worries.

 

[fishbulb]

There is another added level of redundancy with the Apex that I find virtually no one ever does. I set all of my equipment on a cycle time and incorporate virtual alarms. This works with all dosing and heating. The logic works something like this.

Set heater to 80F or use heater without a thermostat like some of the big Ti heaters.
Set Apex to turn off heater at 79F

Now set timer cycle on the Apex so that the heater is on for 2 minutes every 30 minutes. If the tank does not reach 79, then increase to 3 minutes every 30 minutes and so on. At some point the tank will reach 79 and even if all temp sensors fail, you will not cook the tank. I do this with kalk dosing as well so no matter what happens, I can never dose WAY too much.

Cheers,
FB

 

[josephxsxn]

1. Have you ever had a heater fail in some way and what was the results? How did it fail?
Had a thermostat die on a JBJ heater, and had the ground go out on a heater. Thermostat as caught same day, and the ground issue was found by shocking myself putting my hand in the water.

2. What are some safeguards you have in place regarding heaters in your aquarium?
Dual thermostat probes on ink bird, one in sump and one in display tank... Thinking about adding a grounding probe.

3. WHO DO YOU THINK MAKES THE BEST HEATERS and what brand do you use?
Finnex Deluxe Titanium heaters. Had one get covered in GSP and kept working for 2 years before I retired it. Check out the photo.

 

[BKLYN651]

High End Titanium Heater leaked after about Five Month. Guess what the Outside doesn’t bleed into the water but the innards do. Corals told me something was wrong. Drs. Foster & Smith did Credit me for the heater. I really miss D.R.&S. Not the Same since P-C took them over. BTW the heater wouldn’t trip the GFI till I moved the ground probe from the Aquarium to the Sump.

LiveAquaria still sell supplies, just bought a heater from them.

 

[t5Nitro]

I'm trying to remember what my settings are. I have 2 eheim heaters connected to an ITC308 inkbird controller. The heaters switch on if the probe senses 25C. Im trying to think that my heaters themselves have the dial set to around 78 or 79F. Is this the ideal way to do it?

The inkbird should keep them on to heat to 77F and shut them down. I figured if anything got stuck on whether the inkbird not reading right the heaters would shut themselves off at 78-79? Or would the controller keep them turned on anyway?

 

[Ferrell]

I run 2 heaters (Finnex analog) in my 75, 3 in winter because we keep our house in the 60s. Full apex
inkbird on my 30 which I’m getting ready to increase to two heaters same reason.

 

[ca1ore]

I have never had a heater physically break, though I have had them both get struck on and fail to turn on. Been using external controllers and redundant heating elements for decades, so never had one crash the tank. I'd be curious to know the circumstances under which a heater physically fractures. Seems to me you'd have to allow it to become exposed to the air .. which is more a system design flaw.

 

[scabbedwings616]

I am lucky enough to never had a heater explode on me. I have had one that was stuck on and not heating. That voltage shock made me get a grounding wire for the tank and now I don’t worry about that. I’ve had them be stuck on even though there was a controller on the heater and luckily my apex just shut it off. I go with multiple heaters in my system to make sure things don’t get too hot. I also run a chiller on my tank just Incase and it hasn’t failed me yet.

 

[lapin]

Ti heater element went bad. This caused the controller to cycle on and off and show weird temp fluctuations. Since i had 2 heaters and 2 controllers it was easy to diagnose the problem.

 

[ScottB]

Most of my wounds in the hobby are self-inflicted, including my only mishap with my heater. I was cleaning around my sump, and I had to move some wires around the back of it, and it snagged the temp sensor of my heater and pulled it out of the water onto the floor without me noticing. Later that night, I knew something was up when my tank's temp got over 90, and figured out my mistake. Made sure the temp sensor is well secured going forward.

+1 to this. Luckily, I had APEX temp controller in the middle. Took me a couple days to notice/figure out why my APEX kept shutting down the temp controller.

 

[Techno10]

I had the heater glass shatter, the sump had run low where the heater was. Didn’t realize the heater had turned on and once the water refilled it popped. Luckily nothing got electrocuted.

 

[McPuff]

- I have had a heater explode. Luckily it was in a QT tank (fairly recently) and nothing was harmed.
- Since my tank is 300 gallons I have had the problem of heaters being too small... although it was more that the heater cr@pped out on me and just didn't put out the wattage it should have. Of course this only happens in the winter. But the backup wasn't big enough... it just helped out until the new one arrived. I only use Finnex titanium heating elements controlled by Apex at this point. No glass, no 'splosions!
- See previous point. Although the Finnex titanium elements have no controllers within, they still give out more often than I thought they would. I always have two running in my tank (800W and 500W currently).

 

[Brice Wagner]

I plugged it into the wrong terminal in my apex after the water change. It stayed off for several days. Didnt loose anything thankfully.

 

[block134]

I recently had two heaters go bad at the same time or close to it. I didn't notice until I got notifications from my apex that the temp was low. Both were Eheim jagers plugged into an ink bird controler which is plugged into the Apex.


The two things I found odd are the lights on both heaters would turn on to show me they were working but they didn't get hot. I also noticed that in the Apex power monitor that I would get a spike indicating that the heaters were pulling the correct watts for a few minutes then stop for half a day. The heater lights stayed on the whole time no matter what the watts indicated in apex.

 

[Glass Algae]

Stictly have used eheim jagers since I started. I originally wanted to snap them all in half trying to calibrate them to match the numbers on the dial. Once I learned there was a learning curve that I was at the bottom of I realized it was operator error and that I'm not as smart as I think I am.

Long story short. Eheim jagers baby

 

[brandon429]

I will always trust the wal mart tetra 78 degrees preset shortbus heater for my super old pico though it takes up half the scape. in fact I change them out preemptively about every 6 years or so.

 

[BackToTheReef]

After years of telling my customers to turn their heaters off and/or place them low in their tanks so they wouldn't get exposed during water changes I did a big water change on one of our FW tanks. I heard the sound that makes your heart sink.

Luckily I had the plastic guard that basically kept it all together until I could get it unplugged and out of the tank.

 

[wenliu51]

I used the exact same heater that is pictured and it exploded last week. So it's pretty funny to see this post. This is for my QT and I was in midst of a 50% water change after removing fish (thankfully!) and adding new fish. I completely forgot to unplug it especially since it's placed horizontally close to the top. Sigh..

 

[chemisfun11]

Been in this hobby for over 15 years...and I've bought every brand/type of heater you can think of and they all fail. In my experience they don't produce heat and the tank gets cold. Happens every winter and at least one or more of my heaters fails. Thankfully I run an apex controller and I get alerted when the temp gets to low. If the temp ever got too high, apex cuts the power and I have a fan that blows air on top of the water (evaporative cooling = no chiller necessary)

So, I have about 250 gallons of water volume and I run at least 3 heaters 300w min and 400w max. I have settled on Marineland heaters for the past decade for one reason...guaranteed for life. Anytime one of their heaters fails I can send it back and they replace it free of charge. It used to be really easy, give them the serial number and they'd send you a new one in about a week. People started becoming dishonest (shocking, I know) and now you have to mail back the defective heater with the cord cut off. Regardless, the shipping cost is a fraction of the cost of a new heater and because I run multiple heaters and always have a backup or two on hand since inevitably any heater you buy will fail.

 

[RIC13]

Other. I’ve had three heaters short and electrify the water. Each time I learned about the failure when I stuck my hand in the water. Fortunately, it was always in a mixing container or a tank prior to adding livestock. I’m looking for some good recommendations.