I'm working on getting all the equipment I want before I set up my tank and I just bought a neptune apex and I'm wondering what the best combo of heaters to run with the apex on my 125 gallon?
Personally, I'm a big fan of Finnex titanium heaters. There's no glass to break, some of them have a separate temp sensor that's not built-into the heating unit, and the three-pronged plug versions also act as a grounding probe.
I use mine with my Apex in a somewhat atypical fashion. Lots of times, folks turn their heater temp all the way up and use the Apex temp probe to determine when the heater outlet gets power and managing it this way. For my setup, I set the temp on my heater for my target tank temp (78) and only use the Apex temp sensor to kill power to the heater outlet if it goes above or below a certain temperature. This way, I have some redundancy and it would take both my heater and my Apex temp sensor to both go bad for it to nuke my tank.
I want to get two heaters with dissimilar technology but I don't want to break the bank if I don't have to. I haven't used a controller yet so idk what I should get.
Finnex and viaaqua both make good reliable cheaper end titanium heaters.
Just because we know heaters generally fail in on position backing them up with your apex is a good idea and break total wattage down into smaller many heaters is best.
So instead of 1 x 300w heater I would do 2 or 3 x 75-100w heaters.