Cali Kid Corals

Ranco Heating (and Cooling) Controller

The good news is that the Aqua Logic website is back online :).

In summary, this post was about where to get the controller and which exact model, if not from Aqua Logic. It is indeed an old tech product, that looks very unpolished from an visual design perspective and where I struggled in the beginning a lot to program it properly (separate post: https://www.bareefers.org/forum/posts/486898/). However, it's commercial application appealed to me and the fact the folks have these for a long time/a decade and are still working. Despite so many other options, I have also not seen another controller with the same long-term reputation for reliability.

The importance of redundancy is what I learned early on, and should defintely be thought through well when setting this up, regardless of the products used to achieve this.

Despite the limited scope of this post, there are some great additional learnings here for me:

- Lot's of places to buy this controller from other than aqua logic directly (championlighting, supplyhouse.com). However, prices seem slightly higher, although they may charge less for shipping than aqua logic does so overall possibly not more expensive.

- Rancos do not need to be expensive, if you do not require two stage, and if you can do some of the wiring yourself. This would make them a competitive product despite the remaining clunkiness of the setup and the old tech appeal.

- Great discussion around Inkbirds, and it seems like the WIFI version should be avoided, which would enhance reliability. This is good to know IMO.

- Interesting perspective from John on product visibility and use and the number of complaints correlation. I do sometimes feel the same way where people seem to not be successful with a good product due to misuse or not knowing how to use this properly, and complain about the product having issues. I am still not planning to invest (more) into the APEX world for now and will continue to research alternatives or wait for alternative offerings. Seems like Hydros have become more popular, but I have not read enough about comparisons yet.

Maybe I should start a new post about the titanium heaters :). I only use them except for brute containers, but I wonder if they are actually more reliable than EHEIM or any other? Specifically the higher watts.
 
The good news is that the Aqua Logic website is back online :).

In summary, this post was about where to get the controller and which exact model, if not from Aqua Logic. It is indeed an old tech product, that looks very unpolished from an visual design perspective and where I struggled in the beginning a lot to program it properly (separate post: https://www.bareefers.org/forum/posts/486898/). However, it's commercial application appealed to me and the fact the folks have these for a long time/a decade and are still working. Despite so many other options, I have also not seen another controller with the same long-term reputation for reliability.

The importance of redundancy is what I learned early on, and should defintely be thought through well when setting this up, regardless of the products used to achieve this.

Despite the limited scope of this post, there are some great additional learnings here for me:

- Lot's of places to buy this controller from other than aqua logic directly (championlighting, supplyhouse.com). However, prices seem slightly higher, although they may charge less for shipping than aqua logic does so overall possibly not more expensive.

- Rancos do not need to be expensive, if you do not require two stage, and if you can do some of the wiring yourself. This would make them a competitive product despite the remaining clunkiness of the setup and the old tech appeal.

- Great discussion around Inkbirds, and it seems like the WIFI version should be avoided, which would enhance reliability. This is good to know IMO.

- Interesting perspective from John on product visibility and use and the number of complaints correlation. I do sometimes feel the same way where people seem to not be successful with a good product due to misuse or not knowing how to use this properly, and complain about the product having issues. I am still not planning to invest (more) into the APEX world for now and will continue to research alternatives or wait for alternative offerings. Seems like Hydros have become more popular, but I have not read enough about comparisons yet.

Maybe I should start a new post about the titanium heaters :). I only use them except for brute containers, but I wonder if they are actually more reliable than EHEIM or any other? Specifically the higher watts.

With the amount of money we spend on livestock, lighting, etc etc - I think it’s silly to worry about spending a couple hundred bucks to add some redundancy/reliability to the component of your system most likely to fail catastrophically.

This was my thinking, anyway, and my Ranco has been bulletproof (so far).
 
The Apex outlets are not unreliable, they are more reliable than anything else you are considering in my opinion. They can fail like anything can. But of course lots of reefers and especially entry level people have them so there is guaranteed to be lots of public complaining. Same issue for InkBird.

Rancos on the other hand are a super-niche product that are really pretty uncommonly used in our hobby and mostly by more advanced (or at least older) reefers. The kind of people who tend not to complain as much publicly when things don’t work.

I think your view of what is reliable or not is very heavily skewed by this complaint availability bias.

You definitely should take heating control seriously. The way you do that is with redundancy. I have my Apex with the EB832 power bar controlling temp, with non-wifi InkBird in-line to a solid-state titanium heater. The Apex is the controller and the InkBird is the failsafe in this setup. And I have 2 smaller heaters each set to slightly different on/off temps so that one is on most of the time and the other is almost always off, so relatively little switching happening. Plus if either is stuck-on it doesn’t cook the tank because they are relatively small for tank size.

If you are going to get a Ranco go for it, but it should be one of these controllers not both. If your heater has an integrated temperature controller, that can be your failsafe (set to a higher temp), but those are basically always not as reliable as any of the other options we’ve been discussing. Nevertheless, this is what I’m doing with 5 smaller tanks (related to the Berghia project) where I have an InkBird as the controller and the integrated temperature controller on the heater as the failsafe. Haven’t had any serious failures.
Berghia tanks and a reef tank with thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars worth of livestock are not the same tho. Things I would risk with one I might not with the other
 
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Berghia tanks and a reef tank with thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars worth of livestock are not the same tho. Things I would risk with one I might not with the other
Yes of course, that’s why the InkBirds are the failsafes for my display vs the primaries for my smaller less critical tanks. My point was just that they’ve worked well in real world use.
 
Yes of course, that’s why the InkBirds are the failsafes for my display vs the primaries for my smaller less critical tanks. My point was just that they’ve worked well in real world use.
I don’t disagree. I have several in use as well. I feel better about a ranco though. For my clients that are serious I say buy a ranco. For those that don’t care I say please get an ink bird! The heater you are using on its own is a baaaaad idea!
To me, the difference in price for just one is not that big and worth it
 
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