which brand of heater would you recommend?

[Oxquo]

Actually I just set up the WON titanium heater from Kensfish, a 500 watt with the controls on the outside and love it. My tank is almost warm in no time. Titanium is the only way to go, no more broken heaters. The controls on the outside save your hands from PO'd fish. They aren't to bad of price either. I don't know if there are any more 500 watt kits but the tubes are easy to install onto the controllers. Here is a pic of the 350 watt for $22.95 USD If you order do 6-10 days shipping it should take only 7 days and it will come duty free.

[RDFISHGUY]

A 500 watt heater is an excellent choice if you have a lot of water movement , otherwise I'd go with 2 -250's for a more even temperature.

[Oxquo]

I always find fish get along better in fast water, or atleast the fights don't last as long. My pump running to My wet dry is a little over done so I had to divert it a little. I agree though except with the longer titaniums You can place them center and side ways in the cooler water column about 6" off bottom it gives a little cool spot still but a nice even heat. either way it doesn't seem to matter but if i ran two heaters I'd buy the controller as well.

[RD.]

The Visitherm Stealth heaters are also unbreakable ......

Rita - have you read the various heater reviews here?

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/reviews/categ...y.php?CatID=701

Some interesting comments about both the Eheim ebos, as well as the Won heaters.

caveat emptor

[Oxquo]

It's funny on review boards like that, that only the people with problems reply. All of the heaters had a stash of bad reviews. Especially the one guy who turned it on, set it and went to bed, where do You find boneheads like this? I would love to trade him some shiney coins for some boring old paper money, lol. The reviews make all of the heaters look so crappy that I would not trust any of them. Life is a lemon and I want My money back! I wish people who liked their products would spend the time they saved not messing around with junk and returning products to write simple positive reviews instead of all of the negative reviews. Over-all though, if a person just read the stats page they should get a pretty good idea. I would only abide by the reviews though with a huge grain of rock salt. Visa therm looks good though, Ebo Jager is almost always a reliable favorite. I also have a 250 watt Guardian that I have no grief at all with, My Red Devil has been beating it for months now with no fluctuations. Every brand has it's lemons, that is why We have warranties. About a month ago a guy was driving a Lexus down the highway here and his axel snapped, it was on a test drive with the dealer, He still bought a Lexus just not the one He tested and the model wasn't recalled. All products have their good and bad, We just hear about the bad thats all.

Edited October 28, 2006 by Oxquo

[RD.]

It's funny on review boards like that, that only the people with problems reply. All of the heaters had a stash of bad reviews.

Not exactly, there are scores of positive reviews for many of the models listed. Take the ebo-jagers as an example, with a total of 84 reviews most of the negative comments have only surfaced since Eheim bought them out. Coincidence, perhaps, but even members of this forum have posted about faulty ebos in the past 12-24 months, so I certainly wouldn't rule out all of the negative comments.

[k9outfit]

Thanks for the link, RD. I usually find out about these informative pieces after the fact. :boxed: (I also have added my $0.02 worth.)

And thanks again everyone; I'll definitely be going the "Stealth" route! :thumbs:

[RD.]

Take the ebo-jagers as an example, with a total of 84 reviews most of the negative comments have only surfaced since Eheim bought them out.

Make that 85. :ph43r:

Sorry to hear about all the problems you've had with your heaters Rita, and glad to help out.

[midgetwaiter]

The best heater is 2 little ones. If you take a look around you can find stories of any heater locking on and casing trouble, it's the nature of the devices to fail that way. If you need 100 watts get 2 50s or use a controller to monitor the heater. You are going to just about double your cost either way but for many of us that have stood there watching a prized fish get poached it seems like a small thing.

[Medicdude]

Fluval has a new heater out that has a digital sensor inside for temp accuracy as well as an auto shut off if the heater comes out of the water. I quite like it myself. It's pricd compareable to the Ebo's.

[Nandopsis]

Do you know what it is called?

I looked on their website and doesn't show anything about them.

[Oxquo]

I think the new Ebo's are oviously not the old reliable ebo's. Therefore they should have changed their name completly. It is just as important to make a good choice in heaters and equipment as it is to maintain them. Daily checks of temperature, filtration and lighting and regular maintenance is never replaced by good equipment. I have had people come to Me and tell me that they had such big filters that they never did waterchanges. Hmmm, ever open a fluval that has been run on an overstocked tank for 7 months without ever being opened? That smell would put chilli festival poo to shame. The point is, all companies make a bad piece every now and again, some more than others.

Set up your heater, rinse firstin warm water.

place heater in tank according to heater, submerse or not according to I mean.

make drip loop before plug.

Plug in and wait.

Keep checking water temp

when temp is reached, back heater up so light just shuts off.

add a little cooler water and check that light goes on.

If it's a glass heater never expose while plugged in as it will get too hot and any water hitting it will cause it to break likely.

Check inside glass if it it glass, look for humidity inside.

Oh and don't put glass heaters in aquaria with large robust fish.

Of coarse we all know these steps, they're on the box. Except for maybe the guy who boiled his Tropheus by going to bed after setting up his new heater. Following these steps means that if You buy a lemon of any brand, You can return it before it creates fatalities.

[RD.]

Following these steps means that if You buy a lemon of any brand, You can return it before it creates fatalities.

If only it was that simple. I've read numerous accounts where people who actually do know what they are doing, went to bed with a perfect temp, and woke up to a tank of cooked fish. Or left town for a day & when they returned the following day their tank was over 100F, and again, a tank full of cooked fish. In many cases these failures were with respectable brand name heaters, and in some cases this happened even when using 2 smaller sized heaters. Also, in many cases these were with heaters that had maintained accurate temps for several months, or longer.

Last year there was a thread regarding this very subject, and several members here had either had a tank wiped out due to a faulty heater, or caught it just in time to save their fish. At that time we had maybe 500 members, and with only approx 5-10% at best that posted on a regular basis, IMO several people out of 25-50 people is a rather significant number when it comes to a piece of equipment that has the potential to wipe out an entire tank.

IMO if you have a tank where you simply cannot afford to lose the stock, do as Oxquo mentioned, and also run your heaters through a separate control unit. There are numerous options available for heater control units, my personal choice was a Medusa TC-250. There are far less expensive options available, or one could even build their own.

Edited October 29, 2006 by RD.

[midgetwaiter]

Fluval has a new heater out that has a digital sensor inside for temp accuracy as well as an auto shut off if the heater comes out of the water. I quite like it myself. It's pricd compareable to the Ebo's.

This is the old Tronic heater that Hagen has been selling for ever. I'm not sure if they did any design changes for the new brand or not, doesn't look like they changed much.

As per some of the other comments, it's not the new heaters that worry me as much but the ones that fail after time. If you have a 250 watt heater in your 50 gal that locks on it doesn't take long for things to get bad. Say I check the temp before I go to work and it fails just after I leave. If I'm not home for 10 hours that's enough time for it to kill something. On my tank full of feeder guppies, no biggie. On the tank with my clam and impossible to replace frogfish, very biggie.

In many cases these failures were with respectable brand name heaters, and in some cases this happened even when using 2 smaller sized heaters.

This smells a bit funny to me, either the "small" heaters were still too big and one of them did the damage or the person had bad enough luck that both heaters failed at the same time. The chances of that are incredibly slim.

Edited October 29, 2006 by midgetwaiter

[RD.]

I can't recall each case, but one that does stick out in my mind was a 125 gallon tank heated by two 200W heaters. According to the owner, only 1 heater failed, and by the next AM his tank was cooked. Of course this would depend on the ambient temp of the room, the temp that he normally kept his tank at, and the amount of surface agitation in the tank, but still, one wouldn't think that a single 200W heater would reach such high a high temp overnight in a 125 gallon, but I guess that in this case it did just that. He lost a large whack of adult fish.

Here's the past thread where I had mentioned this;

http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=5120

Here's a past thread where I ran a poll on heaters that had failed in the ON position;

http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=5128

38 votes, and 13 members that had heaters fail in the ON position.