Large Heater Recomendations

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Dec 2, 2000
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My cheap heaters have recently crapped out on one my tanks. So now I only have a 150w heater in 500g of water. The weather is starting to warm up here and the basement isn't as cool as it was during the summer. So the tank is still staying in the low 70's. But I'm going to go ahead and buy a single large heater now, and another in a couple months (I don't have a lot of spare cash right now). I was looking at both the 500w Silica Glass Heater, and the 500w & 800w Titanium heaters. I'd prefer to go with the 800w Titanium right now (just because its the largest), but I've heard several things about them being unreliable. Does anyone have experiance? I also thought about getting 3 of the new Ebo Jager 250w. But then, in the end, I would wind up with about 9 heaters sticking in this tank, so I don't know how good of an idea that is.


Thanks
 
Personally, I like the heaters where the controller stays outside the tank much more than the ones which are entirely submersed (such as the Ebo Jaeger). Submersible heaters always seem to develop leaks over time, and then begin to stick in the "on" position, to the detriment of long-term temperature control. I'd go with two of the 500W titanium heaters and see if that's enough before adding any more.
 
if you do buy one large heater, and it fails then you have no back up. similarly, if you have one large heater, and it gets stuck in the 'on' position, then it will boil your fish. however, like you say, you dont want loads of them - they arent the most decorative things. but best, like harry tolen said, to go for two, so you have a back up, and if one does get stuck on then it wont be over-powerful enough to cause as much damage as one large one would - remember it would only be half as powerful.

hope this helps.
 
Thanks for the replies. Two 500w heaters it is. That should enough to heat 500g for me. Harry, have you used the Titanium heaters? I was under the impression that they were very good heaters, until I read a post on another forum this morning stating that they were unreliable. Would anyone else recommend the Titaniums over the Silica Glass?

Thanks
 
I use a Via-Aqua Titanium heater and am very pleased with it. It really has three interconnected parts. the heater itself which sits in my sump, the temperature control unit which has a long enough cord to hang in my stand and the thermoter with a cord the allows me to place it iconspicuously in my tank

I won't go back to the old style heaters
 
Superstein, how long have you had your heater? What sort of seals does the heating element have? I'm curious about whether the design of these kinds of heater makes them less prone to fail.

Thank,
Jim
 
Jim, well unfortunately I can't give you a long term report on it as I have only had it for about 5 months. But so far, so good. My temperature stays a constant 76 degrees.

As far as the seals on the heating element, there is only one - where the wire is connected. Picture a metal bar with a seal at one end of the bar for the wire and solid metal at the opposite end I can't say for sure what makes up the seal (I didn't attempt to pull it apart) - it just has about a 3/4 inch rubber/plastic (probably more like a hard rubber but could be some special compound) cap over the one end with the wire coming out of that cap. The cap end seems to be integrated with the end of the wire - ie all the same material. I do have this fully submersed in my sump with no problems so far

Sorry I can't shed more light on the seal - Hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions
 
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