PumaWard
08-15-2003, 8:19 AM
How many watts per gallon should you have in your aquarium for a heater? I have a 4 gallon that I would like to heat....
JSchmidt
08-15-2003, 8:52 AM
The amount of heating you need depends on what differential there will be between the tank and room temperature and how often the room temp will change. For example, if you live in a cold climate and allow your house to cool from 72 degrees in the day to 60 degrees at night, you will substantially more heating capacity than if you keep the house temp at a steady 70 degrees.
The hard thing in your case will be finding a heater small enough. A rule of thumb is that you should have between 3 and 5 watts of heating capacity per gallon of water. A 25 watt heater, if you can even find one that small, would be a bit oversized for your tank. I don't know if smaller heaters are available, but a 10 or 15 watt heater would probably be more like it.
HTH,
Jim
Andy16
08-15-2003, 10:41 AM
Sometimes teh lights heat up the tank also. But that doesnt always work if your house gets cool at night like JSchmidt stated.