Help Deciding A Fishtank Heater

[890jj]

hello, I am new to the forum but not to fish keeping. I have my entire set up chosen and working great but i am undecided on the fish heaters due to my last few have failed and killed my fish. please guide me in the right direction in stable and constant heaters. thank you

 

[rabbut]

Personally, for internal heaters, I'd use Visitherms all the way. I know people that have ran them after 30 years of continuous use without problems... Alternatives would be Fluval Tronics for an internal, they are supposed to be good but I haven't used one, or a Hydor Exturnal that I use on my Discus tank currently, and they work a treat

Avoid like the plague, Superfish heaters, as they are useless IME... I adveraged a one-a-month failure rate, runnig two on a 83g...

All the best
Rabbut

 

[kj23502]

There's a huge thread on RC talking about the visitherm stealths throwing excess current into the water At one time, one was throwing 39 watts into tank.

People in my RC go with Won Brothers. They also use Ranco controllers. With the controller you won't have to worry about your heater on turning off b/c the controller turns it on and off.

 

[DarrenUnwin]

Hydor also do an inline unit which means you can hide it away from view in the tank (if you dont have a sump). I have mine on the return from my canister filter.

 

[BigC]

Heaters come and go to be honest, the fact of the matter is, at some point in time a heater/stat is gonna fail no matter which brand you chose, Over the years I've tried them all even back in the days when we had seperate heaters and externaly hung thermostats (silk stats) Visitherm, Jebo, Hagen, Eheim etc, etc,etc,
There is some solace in all of this, I actually did like the Visitherm model as previously mentioned. It seemed to perform the best out of all the ones I'd used previously.
I'm currently trying the RENA Smartheater due to a breakdown in my last one (Eheim Jager)which could have had dire consequences to my tank stocking.
I'm using it in conjunction with an ATC 300 Temp Controller for added piece of mind.
Whatever comes or goes ...make sure you choose a heater which corresponds to the size/volume of your tank
Of-course you could also try a ThermoFilter depending on the size of your tank. (External Canister filter with incoorporated heating element, thermostacially controlled) but quite expensive.
Hope that was of some help to you.
Regards
BigC

 

[xxBarneyxx]

I have one of the enhiem canister filters with a built in heater and it is brilliant!

As mentioned there are some good "inline" ones that means you dont have to have them inside the tank. There are a lot of good ones on the market yet with extra safety features as well which are well worth paying the extra couple of pound for. Ideally you want one that is going to shut down if it fails and in some way tell you it has failed (a lot of the latest ones have either lights or audible warnings to tell you when something has gone wrong).