how many watt heater for a 15 gal tank
- Thread starter Gumby131
- Start date
Hi, You generally need 3 watts per gallon. So a 50 watt heater will work for you nicely. You could use a heater that sticks to the inside back of tha tank as opposed to a submersible heater also. Good luck!!
You need 5 watts per gallon so what I would suggest is to get a Whisper Heater 20. Oh, and that would be a 100 watt heater.
Who told you 5 watt's per Gallon? a heater chosen should be 2-3 watts per gallon to provide adequate heat. Personally my own preference is to undersize the heater as this lessens the risk of the unit malfunctioning and cooking the tank. as an alternative you can install a pair of smaller heaters rather than a single or large one. for example a 50 G would usually use a 100 - 150 watt heater, but 2 50 or 75 watt units would do a better job. In Gumby's case he has a 15 G tank and he would most definetly use a 50 watt heater as the tank is not large enough to worry about drastic temp. swings.
General rule of thumb is 5W per gallon. Do a search on this forum or web.
BUT thats very vague. It depends on how much you need to raise the tank temperature above ambient temperature and tank size.
Here is a page that'll help to explain this:
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/tipsandtables/l/blheatersize.htm
As an example: Because we like it cool at night we let the house temp drop into the very low 60s in the winter. A 50W heater could no longer maintain 81 degrees in my tank when that happened - so now i am using a 75W heater in a 10G.
Of course as soon as summer rolls around i'll replace that one with the 50W again to minimize possible dangers incase of a heater failure.
BUT thats very vague. It depends on how much you need to raise the tank temperature above ambient temperature and tank size.
Here is a page that'll help to explain this:
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/tipsandtables/l/blheatersize.htm
As an example: Because we like it cool at night we let the house temp drop into the very low 60s in the winter. A 50W heater could no longer maintain 81 degrees in my tank when that happened - so now i am using a 75W heater in a 10G.
Of course as soon as summer rolls around i'll replace that one with the 50W again to minimize possible dangers incase of a heater failure.
i have a 50w heater on my 20g and it works just fine. but then i have my tank about a foot from my baseboard heater, so that helps.
