What's the best heater out there that is reliable and won't crack, explode ? (tia)

Cell

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Eheim Jager guy here, but I'm going to try out a Finnex titanium next time I need a heater.
 

AlexG

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If you truly want to get away from electric aquarium heater failures then moving to a radiant heating system with a heat exchanger will eliminate this risk.
 

Juka087

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I see lot of good read on this

Cobalt Aquatics Flat Neo-Therm Heater with Adjustable Thermostat (Fully-Submersible, Shatterproof Design)

Wonder if its truly Shatterproof .... Seems compact !
These are known to explode.
 

ajjw0828

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Eheim for sure! All I use, because I’ve never had one go bad. Had one going for like 13 years in my 90 gallon.
 

Cell

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I've got 2 ITC-306A's running and wouldnt hesitate to purchase another.
 

Michael Gray

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just curious. i have a 250 watt jager still working great... but if i replace mine since its 15 months old... looking at finnex.. why are the ratings so far off... 500w for my 120g? thats alot of power compared to my 250....
 
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kris2001

kris2001

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Thx all...i currently run 300w, 200w, 200w... they're not always all ON.

I've decided to do finnex titanium this time but is it better to have 1 big heater or spilt into 2 similar wattage heaters?
 

SMSREEF

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I see lot of good read on this

Cobalt Aquatics Flat Neo-Therm Heater with Adjustable Thermostat (Fully-Submersible, Shatterproof Design)

Wonder if its truly Shatterproof .... Seems compact !
I have a neo-therm in my nano. They are a really solid heater and compact. Great for an AIO or tight space. It’s 4 years old and never had an issue.
Hopefully I don’t jinx myself by typing that, lol.
 

A sea K

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Doesn’t a controller like a ranco or inkbird take some of the risk away if a heater explodes? It doesn’t allow the tank to continue to heat up corrrect
I wouldnt think so. They sense the tanks temp and will provide current to the heater if it senses a low temp regardless of the heaters integrity. They do however safeguard against a runaway heater which is likely the most common heater failure.

I myself use Eheim heaters on a Ranco controller. Currently using three heaters that I brought in from my older system and have been in use for 4 years now. As you can imagine I'm feeling a bit nervous especially as winter is coming up soon.

When I had my 210 set up I did suffer a controller failure that caused a lot of issues before I realized what had happened. I had the controller in my stand cabinet directly above the sump and believe salt creep led to the failure. Since then I have gotten wiser and my current controller is on its third system now.
 

Cell

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Eheim Jager guy here, but I'm going to try out a Finnex titanium next time I need a heater.

Well I had the opportunity to try the Finnex and I ended up going with Jager's anyway...I guess I'll just be a Jager guy until one actually fails me.
 

MONTANTK

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I’ve always ran an Eheim Jagger without any issues. Never replaced them either. The store I worked at ran an Eheim in every tank (20-30) for the 5 years I worked there. Only saw 1 crack but no damage was done.
 

Brew12

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Thx all...i currently run 300w, 200w, 200w... they're not always all ON.

I've decided to do finnex titanium this time but is it better to have 1 big heater or spilt into 2 similar wattage heaters?
I have been running a pair of the finnex titaniums for almost 3 years no, no problems. I do run them on GFCI's so they deenergize if they do fail internally.
I have 300W heaters and one is big enough to heat my 187g tank. I keep the 2nd one set 0.5F colder so it acts like a backup.
 

Larry L

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Eheim for sure! All I use, because I’ve never had one go bad. Had one going for like 13 years in my 90 gallon.

Eheim jagers are pretty good but I think not quite the same quality standards as the old Ebo Jagers which were really great, I've had Ebo Jagers that lasted for years and years. That being said I think the Ehiem Jagers are still the best of anything I've tried in the past several years.

And I definitely recommend running with a temp controller no matter what heaters you pick - it's a cheap piece of insurance given that heater failures seem to be super common compared to everything else that can go wrong in a tank.
 

Tamberav

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I see lot of good read on this

Cobalt Aquatics Flat Neo-Therm Heater with Adjustable Thermostat (Fully-Submersible, Shatterproof Design)

Wonder if its truly Shatterproof .... Seems compact !

Those are known to explode. I had two fail. My finnex and Jager are going strong. Jager is probably my favorite in that it doesn't seem to fail often and if it does it just fails in the off position. They seem to honestly last forever and somehow don't cost much.
 
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SMSREEF

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Those are known to explode. I had two fail. My finnex and Jager are going strong. Jager is probably my favorite in that it doesn't seem to fail often and if it does it just fails in the off position.
Uh oh:oops:
I saw some posts of the larger ones doing this. What size was yours and how long ago was it?
Just nervous because I have one that’s 4 years old in my nano. 50 watt.
 

Scorpius

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There is absolutely no best heater other than the one that is replaced on a yearly basis that has it's own thermostat and then plugged into a heater controller. Also, a backup temperature alarm never hurts for a 3rd fail safe.
 

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