setting up 210.. what size heaters?

[Jason Collins]

So I currently have a 93g cube with one of these Finnex 500w heaters. I have been told by alot of people that 500w is way too much for a 93g cube even though that is what is recommended by the screen shot below.

Well I'm working on setting up a 210. I want 2 heaters for the tank because I want to have one set as a backup 1 degree lower then the main one. Should I use 2 500w heaters in the tank? Is that going to be way too much for the tank? Or should I buy a 300w for the backup and have the 500w as the main one? Just curious what I should go with. But According to the screen shot below 1 500w wouldnt even do the 210g tank by itself

 

[SPR1968]

It may depend on were you live and the climatic conditions but assuming you don’t live in Alaska or Iceland, I would go with 2 of the smaller sizes which are enough to heat your tank, but not enough to boil it if they fail in the on position (assuming you don’t have back up from Apex or similar to turn them off should this arise)

I have around 175g in the UK climate, and have 2 x Eheim 200w which are hardly ever on, and one can easily heat the tank if needed but is not overkill. The second is for redundancy really but again they are hardly ever on.

500w looks a huge amount for that gallon rating.

 

[Jason Collins]

Well they will both be hooked to their own controller... So if the "heater failed" wouldnt the controller kill the power to the heater so its not stuck on to boil the tank? I use Ink Bird Controller

 

[SPR1968]

Well they will both be hooked to their own controller... So if the "heater failed" wouldnt the controller kill the power to the heater so its not stuck on to boil the tank? I use Ink Bird Controller

Ideally yes, in which case you can get whatever you want, but by going smaller it just cuts out a potential catastrophic failure.

I have both mine into a Aqua Medic controller and then that’s also controlled by Apex as a further fail safe (I purchased the controller before Apex)

500w is enough to heat roughly 265 gallons (by normal heater standards) so x two is some serious power.

It could be of course the ones your looking at are in some way different with the advertised rating but they seem way to much.

Maybe compare with a few different ones and see what you can find out.

 

[ca1ore]

Well they will both be hooked to their own controller... So if the "heater failed" wouldnt the controller kill the power to the heater so its not stuck on to boil the tank? I use Ink Bird Controller

The Finnex model you cite has no internal thermometer so it's always stuck on; about the only thing it can do is fail completely. The problem is if the InkBird gets stuck on. I have two and consider them to be borderline junk. I'd not trust them on an expensive tank. You are generally better off with heaters that have internal thermostats because they can then act as redundant control. I generally figure I need about 3 watts if heat per net gallon. Doesn't matter where you live unless you're keeping the tank outside. I use 2 or 3 heaters that together add up to about 1 watt more per gallon than I need.

 

[truetricia]

I would recommend going with two smaller heaters connected to an external controller. A lot of the pros in the hobby recommend this approach since heaters are one of the top failing items in an aquarium. This way if one fails in the "on" heating mode, it won't cook your aquarium. This makes logical sense, and usually only costs a few dollars more than buying one heater. BRS has some good segments on heaters and ratings you should check out. The external controller can be an Apex or a cheaper controller like Inkbird.