Problem With Eheim 2126 Thermofilter

[doubledee]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on a problem I am having with my Eheim 2126 which has a built in heater and separate external temperature controller.

I was woken during the night by the Marina Aqua-Minder alarm going off. I got up but couldn't read the display, so (wrongly) assumed the alarm was activating due to a low battery level. I checked the usual things but noticed the tank temperature on the Eheim's controller was a bit low. I turned the knob to check the thermostat was working and it clicked on and off as it should. When I got up this morning, I checked everything again and noticed that the tank temp was still low (around 23 degrees). I checked the Aqua-Minder and could just make out that the temperature was reading 29.2 degrees!! I have never been that confident in the readings from the Aqua-Minder anyway, so I thought I would get a good-ol-fashioned thermometer out and check the temperature. It was reading 28 degrees. I disconnected the input from the filter to the controller and plugged it back in. Sure enough, it had reset to the correct temperature of around 28 degrees. I returned 15 minutes later to find it had shot down to 23 degrees again. I duly disconnected it and reconnected and it has done the same. I can therefore only assume that the controller is faulty and causing the thermostat to kick in and keep the tank at a higher temperature.

I believe my only course of action right now is to go and get a new heater and set it up correctly and disconnect the Eheim from the system. At present, I have the thermostat set low so hopefully it won't continually kick in. This will have to do until I get to the shops.

This is my first Eheim filter and to say I'm a little disappointed with it is an understatement. The flow rate isn't the best despite regular (bi-monthly) cleaning and now I have this problem with the temperature controller.

What is my best course of action to receive a replacement? Should I go direct to Eheim or contact the retailer as normal? How quickly are these issues normally resolved?

Cheers.

 

[waterdrop]

Although your description sounds like you simply have a true thermostat failure, neccessitating replacement of the thermo part, I will mention the one odd fact I ran into when I was researching the eheim in case it helps in some way: What I discovered was that the eheim district reps seemed to be very worried about anyone using salt in their freshwater thermocannister setup. They said using salt, even a little for medicinal purposes, would invalidate the warranty and it seemed the temp sensors had a real problem with salt. In my own case this caused me to switch to using a Hydor inline heater rather than the eheim heating option.

Again, this is probably not applicable to your situation, just sending you the tidbit I happen to know in case it might help.

~~waterdrop~~