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Close Calls and Do People Replace Heaters Every 3 Years?

littlereefers said:
I tend to rotate tank heaters through a prescribed life cycle. Initially, I first place new heaters in live tanks for some period. Once that period ends, I then repurpose the former tank heaters as utility heaters for salt mixing, qt and emergency setups, etc. After the two periods have then passed, the heater is discarded. My risk tolerance is ~12-18 months per period.
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I think that’s very reasonable for most setups.

I’m a little surprised that heater failure is like the number one cause of tank crashes and there’s not a better option even if it’s substantially more expensive. I think neotherm started in that direction but nothing is really innovative or fundamentally different, it’s just tighter standards of old technology.
 
Flagg37 said:
I think that’s very reasonable for most setups.

I’m a little surprised that heater failure is like the number one cause of tank crashes and there’s not a better option even if it’s substantially more expensive. I think neotherm started in that direction but nothing is really innovative or fundamentally different, it’s just tighter standards of old technology.
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There is a solution, it’s called use a heater controller.
 
Coral reefer said:
There is a solution, it’s called use a heater controller.
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That’s not what I’m talking about. Using a controller is essentially just adding more thermostats to your existing heater(s). I’m talking about utilizing a safer method of producing heat. I don’t have the answer to what that is, I’m just saying there is a need and it would be something that people would pay for.

It would be like LEDs, MHs, and T5’s. Each provide the same function of lighting the tank but each one does it vastly differently. There are numerous ways to create heat. I’m just surprised no one has created a different kind of heater. Again, I don’t know what that is but no one knew that LEDs would work back when the only option was MH or T5.
 
People do sometimes use gas to heat tank.
Plumbed in to main hot water tank, or smaller tankless heater.
But that is really no safer. You still rely on a controller and pump. And if things go wrong, you can cook your tank quickly.

There are solar hot water heaters. I have a huge one for my pool. Could be used for an aquarium.
Complex, not really safer, but very eco-friendly.

One of the best simple things is a cover for your tank.
Greatly reduces evaporation, which is the #1 heat loss.
But you have to be careful to still have enough gas exchange, or your O2 will drop, CO2 will rise, and PH will plummet.
So I would still not call that safer.
 
Electricity is great for heating a tank because it's a purely resistive load, it's "wasted energy" but that waste actually is utilized to heat a tank, it simply does not get any more efficient than that. The problems with heaters crashing tanks is usually because the on/off mechanism fails in some way, whatever method is used to on/off too, the BRS guys found out the hardway how to kill a relay switch when they wanted their temperature within 1/100th of a degree (still not sure I buy that though, but whatever).

Switching away from metal halides we lost another good source of heat, every pump in your tank heats it, want to get more efficient, instead of a 300 watt heater put in 300 watts worth of pumps (Vortech need not apply) you'll heat your tank the same. I believe some have tried to make some sort of liquid cooling heat pipe from lights to heat a tank, but well yeah... it's basically the same as using a gas water heater to heat a tank.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Electricity is great for heating a tank because it's a purely resistive load, it's "wasted energy" but that waste actually is utilized to heat a tank, it simply does not get any more efficient than that....
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Actually, it does. A heat pump really is more efficient.
It would be impossible to GENERATE heat more efficiently than that. But it is possible to MOVE heat and beat the efficiency.
In fact, it is about 3X more efficient.

Look up heat pump water heaters.
 
Going to have to disagree here, nearly 100% of the power going into a heater ends up heating the water (minus whatever heating the cord has going on.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Going to have to disagree here, nearly 100% of the power going into a heater ends up heating the water (minus whatever heating the cord has going on.
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You are missing the difference.

The goal is to increase the temperature of say 100 gallons by 1 degree.
There are two quite different ways to do that.

1) You can generate heat by using electricity in a heating coil.
And no way to get above 100% of course.

2) You can move heat from some other location.
It makes that other location colder, and the destination warmer. Like a backwards fridge.
It takes energy to do that of course. But it is less.

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/water-heating/heat-pump-water-heaters
 
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