Temp controller necessary?t

[Bryson.bobby]

Are temp controllers, such as the one below, necessary if your houses are set to the same temp year round and when your tank heater turns on/off when the aquarium temp rises/lowers?

Where I live I probably don’t need a cooler fan either.

 

[Bryson.bobby]

a

 

[Bryson.bobby]

A

 

[Bryson.bobby]

[a

 

[Mjl714]

I use a backup controller in case my heaters thermostat fails. So no, the above is not necessary if your heater has a decent thermostat built in.

 

[Bryson.bobby]

I don’t see the one below, to which you refer.

Sorry. My phone buggin lol

 

[Mastiffsrule]

A heater is a good thing. It can’t hurt, even if the house is a consistent temp it is there in an emergency.

I have not used the inkbird, I ran a Ranco controller with a titanium heater. I set it up years ago and have not messed with it since

 

[scattered]

a

I do not think that is a necessity. A lab quality probe thermometer is more important in my experience. My tank led thermometer is a couple tenths of a degree off what my probe reads. I have thrown out several heaters and thermometers because of bad thermostats or terrible performance. Commonly used and available thermometers can be very imprecise. If you do not even need a fan to cool, I would not consider a temperature controller.

https://www.globalscientificsupply....MI7s_gu9yj4QIVuSCtBh0_MQsnEAQYASABEgKOa_D_BwE

 

[lion king]

I have a couple of these, they work well and even have an audible alert. If you are using a heater I feel these are necessary, as when a heater fails, many times it happens in an on position, which means boiled fish and corals. At about $35 it's great insurance.

 

[scattered]

I have a couple of these, they work well and even have an audible alert. If you are using a heater I feel these are necessary, as when a heater fails, many times it happens in an on position, which means boiled fish and corals. At about $35 it's great insurance.

This is a standard monitoring conundrum. Who watches the watchers?

What if the thermostat in the controller fails? Generally speaking both devices will have the same fault tolerances built in. That is to say a controller is just as likely to have a component failure as the heater. Doubling equipment means doubling failure rate (standard logarithmic factoring).

Simplify - the same unit that provides you a visual temperature can supply the same to a single controller like an apex or custom Arduino. Scale the main controller not a service dependent consumer.

I have been successful scaling out large enterprise database architectures. I use some of the same practices in my tank philosophy.

 

[Steve Elb]

Are temp controllers, such as the one below, necessary if your houses are set to the same temp year round and when your tank heater turns on/off when the aquarium temp rises/lowers?

Where I live I probably don’t need a cooler fan either.

I use an American Marine pinpoint controller. Pricey but works great and keeps the temperature consistent

 

[scattered]

I use an American Marine pinpoint controller. Pricey but works great and keeps the temperature consistent

How big is the tank? I am thinking narrowly in that regard. I forgot to consider larger installs.

I still prefer a single controller with many service devices as opposed to controller per service.

 

[lion king]

This is a standard monitoring conundrum. Who watches the watchers?

What if the thermostat in the controller fails? Generally speaking both devices will have the same fault tolerances built in. That is to say a controller is just as likely to have a component failure as the heater. Doubling equipment means doubling failure rate (standard logarithmic factoring).

Simplify - the same unit that provides you a visual temperature can supply the same to a single controller like an apex or custom Arduino. Scale the main controller not a service dependent consumer.

I have been successful scaling out large enterprise database architectures. I use some of the same practices in my tank philosophy.

If you set your heater just a hair above the controller and your controller fails then your heater thermo will take over and shut off at just a few 10th of a degree. If both fail, then.... This is for people who are not interested in the apex type of control, I started using these to control temp swings during the time of year where I live, we use the heater and the ac in the same day.

 

[Steve Elb]

How big is the tank? I am thinking narrowly in that regard. I forgot to consider larger installs.

I still prefer a single controller with many service devices as opposed to controller per service.

It's a 100 gallon IM. I have 3 150 watt Eheims in the sump...I like redundancy. The temp varies .5 or so throughout the day

 

[Dkeller_nc]

Are temp controllers, such as the one below, necessary if your houses are set to the same temp year round and when your tank heater turns on/off when the aquarium temp rises/lowers?

Where I live I probably don’t need a cooler fan either.

That depends greatly on what you have in your tank and what you set your house temperature to. A reef tank typically operates at 78 deg F, perhaps as low as 76 deg F. That's awfully warm for most houses in the winter in the frost belt (Ohio). If that's what you do, then yeah, you probably don't need a heater or a controller. But a heater and a controller setup would be far, far cheaper than heating a dwelling to that temp in the winter.