300W Heater Not Enough Or Not Working Properly?

[VespertineStar]

Hi Guys

I've just replaced the old heater I had that was heating my Rio 400 as I finally had the funds. I left it this long because it was somehow doing a decent job of keeping the temp around 26 degrees. I have replaced it with a 300W Fluval E Series which seems to be incapable of heating the tank to more than 23 degrees under the same conditions the 100W heater was heating to 26 degrees.

The ambient temp is 18 degrees and the tank won't heat past 23; I'm concerned that it might be dropping a lot lower than this at night when the ambient temp drops below 10. The heater is set to try and heat the water to 26.

Do you reckon the heater isn't working properly or is a 300W heater really only good for 5 degrees over ambient?

 

[Amerce]

What is the temp setting you have the heater on, is at the max ?

Try using the heater in a bucket of water and seeing if the temp gets above a reasonable temp if you set the dial to 25c, do you actually see the light coming on ?

If the bucket doesn't heat up then I'd take the heater back as being faulty.

 

[VespertineStar]

The temp was set at 26 but I've set it to 28 to no avail. The E series doesn't have an led on it just the LCD displaying the temperature. The ambient temp is now 19.8 and the tank temp has only risen half a degree so I'll put the old heater back in and try setting the Fluval E up in the bucket as you suggested.

 

[minxfishy]

Have to say I have the E Series in my rio 400 and it does struggle to keep the temp up to the desired temp, so I added a second 300W visitherm as a back up, which only occassionally has to come on to help the fluval, its a lot of water for a 300w to cope on its own. The juwel that came with the tank, used to be on full whack just to get to 25c.

 

[VespertineStar]

Yeah I've stuck it into a bowl of water for about an hour and it seems to be heating that up without too much trouble, guess I'm just gonna have to stump up the cash for a second heater. In other "my Rio 400" related news, I've just put two new tubes in after only running on one tube since the other one blew about 3 months ago and...

EDIT: Just put the E Series back into the tank along with another 100W to see how it gets on.

EDIT the second: Any recommendations for replacing the gigantic internal filter with an external? I've looked at the FX5 but a lot of people say it's noisy.

 

[ian]

i had the same problem with my E50, the temp would drop to 23, when it was set to 26. I have had to put the old heater back in now its getting colder, and its brought the temp back upto 26!

i wouldn't recommend wasting your money on the E series!

 

[OldMan47]

If my conversion is working properly, that is about the size of my 120 gallon tank. I am heating mine with a 250 watt at one end and a 300 watt at the other. The mismatch is because they didn't have 2 of either size when I bought them and it seems to work OK so I left it. My room temperature is not as far from the tank temperature as yours and the system is working fine. If I had a 100W heater that held the temperature in a tank that size I would keep it. It is making its own power .

For a filter you could look at the Rena XP series or even the Tetratec series. The larger ones of either brand would probably do the trick for you. I know the Rena line because I have so many of them in my home. They are silent filters. I have a Marineland C-series, which looks like a Tetratec, I suspect they just change the labels when they sell them in the US, and it is also a very quiet running filter. In a Rena, I would use an XP3 unless you have especially messy fish. In that case I would use two of the XP3 filters. I have seen comments from people that I trust that when they started making the larger XP4, they didn't do as good a job on sealing it as they did with the smaller filters.

 

[VespertineStar]

OK if I've got the same problem as you then screw it the #41#### thing's going back and I'm just going to go and buy an element from a kettle and attach a reliable thermometer to it . Well not really but I might just ditch both heaters in favour of a couple of Rena Smart heaters, how does that sound?

EDIT: Thanks OM47, it was only holding 26 degrees during the day when the heating was on, not sure about during the night, I dread to think, or maybe I just need to buy a new thermometer. It's a Reef One submersible and the one in my other tank recently keeled over and let a load of water in which then leaked some funky blue liquid into the tank that I'm sure was probably no good for the fish so massive water change followed

What about http/www.rocketaquatics.co.uk/aqua-unimax-professional-external-aquarium-power-filter-p-2253.html

It's an AquaEL Unimax 700, had good user reviews from what I've found.

 

[minxfishy]

I run two eheim 2217's on my rio 400, silent (after initial tapped air noises), reliable, not too expensive. I used to run an FX5 wasnt particularly noisy, good filter, but I prefer to run the two externals, one on either end.