Nest thermostat backup?

[Andrewalex11]

I've heard of freshwater keepers keeping their aquarium rooms at the temperature that they desire all the aquariums to be run at (around 78 degrees+) to eliminate the need for heaters, or heater failure.

I was considering setting my Nest thermostat to my DIY Aquarium Controller to raise the temp in the room to 78 degrees if it had ever detected a heater failure.

Anyone do this with their reef? Or is it just for freshwater folks?

 

[Fritzhamer]

Back in the metal halide days I used to setup my AC to low energy saver around 72 degrees during the day. I'd then go down to 68 when we were home.

 

[Andrewalex11]

I'm referring to having the thermostat programmed to raise the temperature of the entire room to 78degrees if the Aquarium Controller senses a malfunction of some sort with your heater

 

[Fritzhamer]

This seems extreme. Why not a second heater?

 

[Andrewalex11]

I guess it's that I trust my homes heating controllability more than I trust an aquarium heater. Also my tanks circumstances do not permit me to add excess equiptment like secondary heaters.

 

[Fritzhamer]

You should switch to Eheim heaters. I trust my eheim more than I trust my nest thermostat. I've had a transformer go and stop powering the nest, I've had the nest drop wifi for no apparent reason (I'm in IT and the router is ten feet from the nest). The Nest smoke / CO2 alarm has been plagued with issues since revision 1. I finally took ours down and replaced them with Kidde alarms.

In all this time though my eheims have plugged along without issue. In 30 or so years I've never had one fail on me but I do replace them every five years or so out of paranoia.