Is an ATO 100% necessary?

[n2585722]

Hadn’t heard of inkbird, going to research that. Thanks

It is a brand of heater controllers. If you are not going to use a controller you can get one of those. I always use a backup off on my heaters. In my case I use heaters that have their own thermostats and set their thermostats about 3 degrees higher than the settings on my Hydros which I use to control the heaters but if by chance something were to go wrong the the thermostats on the heaters would turn them off. I also use 2 heaters in the tank so if something goes wrong with one I at least still have one heater. I have a 42 gallon tank and use 2 50 watt heaters. I also have them on XP8 outlets which have wattage range settings which are set to a 45 watt low to a 55 watt high. So if it were to get out of that range when the output is on it will send an alert to my phone and iPad for that.

 

[KingOfBrunswick]

i’d say so, while you could do daily top offs, they’re not precise and if you forget for even a couple of days major swings can occur.

 

[reifen]

If you dont mind the bottle over the tank ,it works very well with no danger to fail ,very cheap from the china shops (ali ,temu)