Update (marineland heater failures)

Star_Rider

AC Moderators
Dec 21, 2005
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Spanaway, Wa.
Real Name
Ed
many know I had another stalth heater failure.

I have had a few fail which I have been keeping to send in bulk back to marineland.

the last failure actually was in a 110 marine tank.

I nearly lost all of my fish but the tomini tang, hippo tang and the clown fish pair have survived.

I did lose a school of reef chromis.
I contacted marine land and they would like the heaters back as well a list of what was lost (prices from my LFS)

I will gather the offending heaters and the list and send them to Marinel and as requested.

time will tell but I do not want their heaters back untill they addressed the issues we have been seeing lately.
 
Subscribed! I'm interested in the outcome of your dealings with marineland being that I've recently switched over several heaters to the stealth. I'm not nearly as happy with their accuracy as the visi-therm model but no full failures yet. I've seen and heard of some real disasters though !
 
I will get the heaters and replacement prices to Marineland this week.

BTW, in the past and some of my older Stealth heaters are very accurate and very reliable.. but as with anything they will wear out.

the last 2 years I have had heaters that do not shut off ot simply short out = very bad for fish.

I have never trusted the dial temp heater setting.i use them as a guideline and trust my thermometers for fine tuning.
 
time will tell but I do not want their heaters back untill they addressed the issues we have been seeing lately.

Can I ask (if ya don't mind) what brand heaters you're switching to if you're not planning on using theirs??
 
I feel your pain, I lost several discus to a marineland stealth pro heater failure. Lately I have been using one of these to control my heaters:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270547445847&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

After three weeks, the thing has run flawlessly. Keeps temperatures within .3 degrees celsius of target temp, and the temperature can be calibrated (I never had do, it was dead on).
this looks like a good idea

kianna not sure which heaters to go with as one problem I had was shorting cords where it goes into the heater.
 
I have 6 stealth pro heaters.
not really happy with any of them. I had 3, they were 4-6 degrees off. contacted marineland, they sent me 3 replacements, I swapped them out, and they are just the same as the first batch. Now I have 6.

I'm not saying that any fish need to have such precise temperatures, but if you are going to advertise something to be accurate to +/-1 degree, then it should be that accurate. So now my heaters are set at almost 84 to maintain just 78F (100 watt heaters, 20 gal tank) I am afraid that one day they will snap and raise the temps up too high.
 
I just got rid of most of my stealth heaters. They work intermittently. Supposedly, the new ones with the indicator lights are better. I won't be buying any though. IMHO, since Aquarium Systems was bought up by Marineland, the Visitherm heater line is garbage!
 
The old Stealths & Deluxe Visitherms were good but lately my newer stealths aren't. I think I may give Jaegers a try but it's the same thing, old name but new co. & dang they're long.
 
Just had one go bad the other day(thank godness for having two in my 55 gal.). The one that went bad did not want to shut off and raised the water temp to almost 90 degrees!!!! I narrowed it down to which one went bad and unplugged it. I'm not going to take a chance and wait to see when the other one goes. I will be replacing that one with a Hydor inline heater.

NO MORE STEALTH HEATERS FOR ME!!!!
 
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