Reef nutrition

Close Calls and Do People Replace Heaters Every 3 Years?

MolaMola

MolaMola

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Two close calls recently with one near-bouillabaisse.
1) A couple weeks ago students in charge of monitoring temp of all tanks told me the clown-nem tank was at 88 deg. Students often make errors, so I told them to go check again. Then I checked. Yikes! Tank had an Aqueon heater set to 76 and a week of testing in a bucket shows it is malfunctioning and will not turn off.
2) I use wicked expensive Cobalt Neotherms in some small tanks because of their compact size, since low wattage Eheims are too long. One day last week I smelled weird chemical smell all day and yelled at some girls for using hair products in the classroom. I later pinpointed the smell to the frag tank mini overflow box. Horrible stench! Thought it was mucky filter floss, but it was the 75W heater! Smells like burnt wires. 3 years old, so out of warranty. Also saw online there was a problem with some of them of a certain manufacture year.
Grabbed a 100W Cobalt I had - did proper setup and that thing kept its set temp at 96! Reset as instructed online and then it either had temp light circling wildly or sticking at 96. Brought it home to test more.
3) I also have an Eheim that I am leery of and need to test more and do the reset/recalibration process on. That has been my trusted go-to brand, but now I hear lots of problems with those, too.

Apparently I have a magic touch to mess up all brands of heaters. I also read that we should be replacing heaters EVERY 3 YEARS. What?!
Since only my big tank has aquacontroller, thought I should get heater controllers, as discussed in recent threads here, as insurance, but some people had trouble with Inkbird or Ranco. Or electronic heaters, which I can't see working well spacewise for small tanks.
I am so lucky no tank inhabitants were cooked, but don't know what to do now or which heaters to get. I guess it's hit or miss like all other equipment.
I think I still have a DIY "thermal shield" I made at old club workshop years ago. Would dig it out and refresh my memory of use, but it requires a second heater, so no room in small tanks.
 
Yeah I've seen the "replace your heaters even if they still work" articles/videos, but it's really hard to just throw away something that still works I mean not even just from a financial standpoint but just from a "wasteful for the environment" stand point. I mean it's not like a pH probe that loses accuracy within a week or anything like that it simply works fine, it just may not work tomorrow.

There really are 3 types of heater issues to worry about
- the one that simply stops working
- the ones that sticks in a given position (either off or on)
- the one that goes out in a literal blaze of glory.

Now I can say I've had all 3 happen from standard glass heaters to electronic controlled titanium heaters, however the last one happens much more infrequently than the first two which is good. I will say a controller like an Apex could help you out in many of these cases simply by monitoring your temperature and the power flow to a heater could have an alarm of some sort set up, unfortunately thinks like the inkbird and ranco simply control the heater. Having 2 heaters that are lower wattage will help you if one sticks always on, and will give you a bit of cushion if one dies, you might notice your tank is a bit cooler. And the last one one... well if you get a tingle/shock when you put your hand in the tank I always think heater first and foremost or if you have that nasty "electrical smell" you can use that as your sense of what is wrong, but keep carbon on hand, and possibly Poly Filters (which can pull out any heavy metals supposedly) and keep yourself fine.

Now if you wanted to stick to the 3 year cycle on heaters, you can always just go with ones in the $30 range and simply chalk it up to a $10/year cost of equipment on the tank ($15 if you do it every 2 years) .
 
I think heater failures are one of the big problems in reef tanks still. It seems like a simple issue but it isn’t. I go into quite a bit of detail on my solution in my tank journal, Post #24. My approach is thorough and high-reliability, but not realistic for people with multiple smaller tanks, like you have.

Really the bottom line is that you cannot trust an inexpensive heater with integrated controller to work reliably. It absolutely will fail at some point, there are several ways to fail, as discussed above. I do not believe in the advice of buying a cheap heater and replacing it every couple years. That plan is wasteful, unlikely to be complied with, and still leaves a high risk of failure.

In my opinion the cheapest minimum setup that is reasonably reliable is:
- Midlevel cost (not cheapo) heater with integrated controller (but preferably with a separate probe).
- Separate controller, I like the InkBird because it is easy and cheap with no complicated setup. Others like the Ranco.
- Have the InkBird controller control the heater, set to the temp you want (heater power cord plugged in to the heater outlet of the InkBird).
- Have the heater’s controller act as a fail-safe against the InkBird failing-on, where you set the temp a couple degrees higher than your target.
- Set alarms on the InkBird for temp out of range, mostly as an early warning if the heater fails-off.
- Mount the InkBird display somewhere you can see it easily, so that if it loses power or fails-off you can see it, and so you can hear the alarm.

If you have an advanced controller like an Apex, you would use that instead of the InkBird as the main controller, alarms, etc.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. And tip about running carbon - I did PWC but wish I had thought of carbon. I wanted small, unobtrusive equipment in the frag tank - only 12" tall with tiny in-tank equipment box. It needs what it needs, though! Now's the time to add extra stuff since I haven't gotten around to threading the cord spaghetti into cable raceway yet.
Kinda feel like stringing long wires up a wall, over a door, and down a wall to tie frag tank into the Apex on main tank. And, of course, the clown tank is equally worthy! Lots of more pressing issues to take care of first. :p
 
Never had a heater without built-in thermostat but I hear what you are all saying, plus others in older posts. Thanks.
I have a cheap controller for a terrestrial pet's habitat, but now am thinking about the reliability of that one, too.
 
Look into the Fluval E series. Has a digital display with color indicator that you can see readily. Not completely fail safe but way more quick feedback than any heater and temp prob combo
 
FWIW, I had a catastrophic failure ~3y ago in one of my grow out tanks. Couldn't figure out why everything melted over a period of a day. The tank was not hot, but it turned out that the heater shorted and so everything fried electrically. I didn't monitor things to closely when I had my two grow out tanks. So., I didn't notice it right away. I've only had one or two other heater failures in 14y which stopped working. Today, I run two Eheim heaters controlled by Apex in my main tank.
 
Thanks all. Not much selection in 75-100W heaters. Trying out three available from Finnex, Eheim, Cobalt, plus an Inkbird. I like that in the summer I can have heater and fan on a dual Inkbird.
 
Funny ... after this thread I took a look at my heaters.
One was not working. :eek:
Had failure "H1". Controller/sensor problem. Well out of warranty.
Fortunately, I have dual heaters, and a spare.
But now I need a new one.

Maybe it is time to build my own controller. One that is more Apex-friendly as well.
 
rygh said:
Funny ... after this thread I took a look at my heaters.
One was not working. :eek:
Had failure "H1". Controller/sensor problem. Well out of warranty.
Fortunately, I have dual heaters, and a spare.
But now I need a new one.

Maybe it is time to build my own controller. One that is more Apex-friendly as well.
Click to expand...
I’ve found re-hashing previously discussed issues helpful quite a few times when it gets me to check my system again.
 
Have temporary heater sideways but want it out of the way in equipment box so stuff can grow on back wall. We will be copying other people's idea of nice green, flowing GSP wall before it takes over our frag tank.
 
What Mark said is interesting though, because he has a bit "smarter" heater than your standard "turn the dial" type of heater, where you might not know if it was working or not simply because they're not on all the time.

For my 200g tank I'm almost ashamed to admit that I use cheaper Aqeuon heaters with no controls on them at all, but I use 4 of them. I would like to eventually replace with titanium heaters and a more robust controller, but for now they work. Also without any controls to them they actually are quite short compared to an equivalent watt heater.
 
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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