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Iceturf
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There seems to be a lot of opinion on 'good' or 'bad' heaters out there. I'm seeings prices all over the place, without reviews to always back things up. I seem to have lost my old heater, and since I've moved my tank to the common area, it is getting surprisingly cold. Looking for advice on a 20 gallon sized heater, to raise the tank about 5*f. Whats good, whats not and why?

Edited by Iceturf
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Penn-Plax Cascade HEAT

Fully submersible, internal glass tubes (not ceramic core) for better heating efficiency.

Guarantied for life, if it craps out I take it back to where I bought it and get a brand new one, no questions asked. Note, I do go to one of the greatest LFS on the planet. Thank you Riverfront!

Low cost is the clincher compared to other brands.

What's not good---> hang on the back or ceramic core heaters. Very poor efficiency, the points stick and fry the tank due to condensation inside the heater, and anything without a temp control.

Cheers

:beer:

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Everybody has their favorites I like Hydor inline heaters for large tanks always proven reliable and they are mounted outside the tank .For smaller tanks like my 20 gallons I use Eheim Jager 75 watt again proven reliable & durable I tend to hard on my equipment always getting banged around and abused.

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The reality is most heaters made for the aquarium industry are crap. Buy a controller, or roll the dice.

I am a Jager fan,they are thermally shatter resistant and have some Fluval (mirrored) ones. But controllers make even crap heaters like store brands better. As they take the cheap contacts out of the equation.

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Jager can be crap too, Jay. :)

Jason from Pets & Ponds told me a couple of years ago that Jager had one of the greatest failure rates (hence store returns) of all the brands that he sells. That doesn't surprise me, there's been a few threads on that subject here on AA over the years as well, like this one from last year. http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=39939

The old Ebo-Jager, pre 2006 when Eheim bought them out, no argument, one of the most reliable heaters on the market.

The reality is that a certain percentage of ALL aquarium heaters made today WILL FAIL, no matter the brand.

Even those with the newer electronic thermostats such as Aqueon Pro can & have failed. A fellow from Aqeuon's R&D dept posted the following: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=252381

That is true but also can be misleading. Yes an electronic thermostat does eliminate the problem of contact points remaining in contact when they should have separated. However, an electronic thermostat can also fail for any number of reasons that can result in the heater overheating. Basically you are trading one method of failure for another. Although IME most of the time when an electronic heater fails it fails in to a shut off mode and stops heating entirely.

Most heaters today have a thermal cut off device built into the heater to prevent a fire in a run dry situation. Some heaters use switches that will reset when the heater cools down and some use fuses that permanently disable the heater. If you have ever done a water change and forgotten to unplug your heater first you probably have activated the thermal cut off. If the heater died afterwards then that heater likely had a fuse. The lights may still function but the heater will no longer heat.

Andy

Dr. Tim Hovanec, Ph.D. and owner of Dr. Tims Aquatics stated years ago on a public forum something along the lines of, high quality "reliable" heaters would be priced out of the market for most hobbyists. Not a lot of people want to pay $100 or more for each heater that they require.

Ironically enough I was just discussing this same thing on another forum yesterday. Do a google search on your favourite heater, then add the word 'failure'.

As an example, the following search string on google, hydor inline heater failure, brought up this discussion.

Hydor inline heater just wiped out my tank

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=190059

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Grab a model you like and go with that. There is always going to be a horror story with ANYTHING in life. Make the best choice you can with what is available to you and your good to go. Tens of thousands heaters, tens of thousands light fixtures, 100's of thousands etc etc are being made there is a failure rate on ANYTHING produced. Vehicles have failures and can lead to death yet people still buy them.

My x brand heater has worked just fine from day1.

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Correct, there is a failure rate on almost everything, the difference is that when it comes to aquarium heaters there is an easy way to add some redundancy to ones system, and it doesn't have to cost a lot. (a controller unit) With a controller in place now two units have to fail in order for one to potentially suffer fish loss.

My x brand heater has worked fine since day1 too, but I've also been kicking around this hobby long enough to have seen a LOT of fish deaths due to faulty aquarium heaters (remember the Stealth recall of 2011?), including numerous members of this little forum, where we are not talking about 100's of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of ANYTHING.

Just some friendly advice, the OP is free to take it or leave it.

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Yup, every bodies got their own favorite. My fav is the finnex heater controller or the Chinese STC-1000 that I've wired myself. Then you can put almost any heater in the tank.

I think the heater is the single piece of equipment we use with the most chance of killing everything in the tank. I Shake my head every time I read a heater failure thread. Spend the money ($40) on a controller and you won't be spending way more than that to replace cooked fish

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Hello.

Similar to this topic so,.

I need about 1000watts of heat for my new holding tank. Needs to be fully submersible and have a cord length of 10'. That's the hard part, a 10'cord. Any suggestions?

I've found the "won titanium heating tube 500w" to have a 10' cord. Anyone have any experience with won brand? If they're worth having than getting 2 and respective controllers would be about 240 bucks. Not unreasonable.

Edited by cullymoto
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