Innovative Marine 400Watt Helio Aquarium Heater Install Review

[Clueless_Reefer]

Hi everyone! I'm starting to post content back on my old YouTube channel with the hopes of helping others. In case anyone is looking at getting this exact model of the Helio (the 400Watt dual rod), this can possibly help ya'll figure out the limitations of it. I have roughly 100 gallons of combined water volume in this system and started out throwing just one of the two elements in and discovered its fine with my current tank in NORMAL conditions but with excessive cold I had to throw in the second. I may post a third video but basically when I threw in the second rod...temperature leveled out in 30 minutes.

Part 1 video:


Part 2 video:

 

[Pistondog]

Interesting. The helios is very different than other heaters and perhaps helios 400 watts is not the same as others. I have a 75g + 20g + 25g fuge with 400 watts it starts to struggle at 63 ambient, 77.5 setpoint.
Can you verify the helios heater is putting out 400 watts with the apex?
Thanks for the video!

 

[Clueless_Reefer]

@Pistondog - I'm glad you liked the video! So, great point. I forget what these elements were pulling but I was monitoring it at the time. I'll actually pull some data for you today and let you know how 1 element is running on itself like I did in the videos. I've been running 2 elements since that second video and it obviously snaps the temp back up in short order.

 

[Clueless_Reefer]

So, an interesting turn of events on this equipment. I purposely let the water temperature drop in order to see how the power output is and here's the findings. On Monday - In image One, that's with One rod working and the other disconnected - its max output on what should be a 200 watt rod was only 144. The second and third images I took yesterday on Tuesday - same test but with two rods on and you can see the most wattage it did on output was shy of 300 watts. Very interesting.

One theory is that the controller notices a 1 degree temperature variance and limits the output (thinking it doesn't need the full amount) and then it ramps up over time? I'll be installing my new tank over the weekend so lets see how this goes.

 

[Clueless_Reefer]

So I spoke with the guys at IM today on a few topics. Its my second time calling in and I really have to hand it to them, they have great support.
-Issue one: the cables are not long enough for my situation. All their cables are 5 feet long and I need them to be 10 or so with my new tank. They mentioned that having extension cables weren't holding up so they're going to start doing longer cables from the elements in a future production run which I thought was great.
-Issue two: It doesn't run close to 400W. They admitted that it isn't supposed to run near that full operating maximum wattage...which I don't agree with. They should really be advertising it as a 300 watt combo, just my two cents.

The fact is, I have to size mine up considerable for my new water volume so I'm going to stay in touch with support to get their 1k watt setup but its going to be a few months before I post an update.

Sadly - when I did startup on my new tank yesterday, my Apex took a crap and its base unit crashed so I couldn't monitor ANYTHING!

 

[leon.1980]

Any updates