High Tide Aquatics

What is your heater setup? I think mine is inefficient.

To heat my 180, I have three heaters, one in the sump and two in the main tank. I'm starting to think it's highly inefficient and maybe just one in the main tank should suffice.
I'm not using a smart controller, but I have been planning to do so and have the parts for a PID.
How are you guys controlling your aquarium temperature?

V
 
To heat my 180, I have three heaters, one in the sump and two in the main tank. I'm starting to think it's highly inefficient and maybe just one in the main tank should suffice.
I'm not using a smart controller, but I have been planning to do so and have the parts for a PID.
How are you guys controlling your aquarium temperature?

V

Ranco two stage controllers. Little pricey, but I haven’t had one fail in years. I have around 4 or 5 running. Great for running heaters or fans/chillers.

 
I'm using the BRS 300W titanium heater with a wifi Inkbird for my 150g in the sump. Have the same setup for my IM SR120. Works great on both tanks. In hindsight for redundancy, I should've opted for two 150w heaters instead.

 
I have a "single stage" Ranco Controller, I've been meaning to install. Can I attach two heaters to it (for redundancy). What's the difference between one and two stages? I bought the controller years ago, planning to deal with this issue, but like everything, never got around to actually doing it.

V
 
I have a "single stage" Ranco Controller, I've been meaning to install. Can I attach two heaters to it (for redundancy). What's the difference between one and two stages? I bought the controller years ago, planning to deal with this issue, but like everything, never got around to actually doing it.

V

A single stage has a single relay that can be controlled by a single set point (hot or cold). A dual stage has two relays that can be controlled independently of each other and have different set points. So with a two stage you could run a heater and a fan or two heaters that turn on at different temperature set points.

The single can only switch on the single relay based on a single set point.
 
I have two 300w Eheim heater in the sump. one is the drain section and one on the return section. Both control by Apex and set at 77F on and 78.5F off.
 
I run the Ink bird on my 30g frag tank in the garage with a small heater and a clamp on desk fan for cooling. On My 180 im running 2 300W in the pump area of the sump. Controlled by Apex.
 
Having 1, 2 or 3 heaters will not effect your heating efficiency (unless you want to get onto the nitty gritty less then 1% nuance) and distributing the heat over multiple locations is better then one location. When the heaters turn on, the watts become BTUs (heat) at roughly 1 watt = 3.4 BTU and you heat the water. Hard to change the efficiency assuming the heater is in an area that circulates water. Heating with 1 heater vs 3 just makes the 1 heater run longer, etc. Having a heater in the tank and on the sump is good if your return pump craps out and distributing the heating elements around should mitigate temp swings assuming thermostats are calibrated.

What are you perceiving as an inefficiency? Are you having irregular temp swings and trying to level that out? Is one heater doing all the work because of calibration?

Having 3 heaters on different controls can be a pain to deal with as all the thermostats are likely off from each other but that just means they will not all turn on-off at the same time, really not an issue and actually has some benefits. Turning all the heaters on/off at the same time will cause more temp swings then staging them as the heaters have latent heat in them after they turn off, which continues to heat the tank for a while after they turn off, causing the temp to drift above your set point.

If you can provide more info on what your issue is, I can help yah out.

Here is what I would do with your heaters personally with the equipment you have:
First, calibrate them all. Put them in a bucket with a power head or something and get them all reading correctly or have them all set to your desired temp.
Then take the 3 heaters and set your more reliable heater to the desired tank temp and the others a little lower by a fractional degree. Different brands make this tough, but you really only need to get it close. Your best heater will be your your primary temperature control. Assume they will all fail one day. If your primary heater fails off, your temp should drift down a bit to the set point of another heater which should be OK, but you will now know a heater busted and can address that issue.

Set the Ranco to kill the power to all the heaters so if one fails ON, it will power them off and now be maintaining tank temps as a higher set point. This will protect you for upward temp drift and when you see that, you know you have a broken heater..

Ideally, the Ranco will always be calling for heat because the internal thermostats of the heater will never reach the Ranco set point unless an on failure occurs. In this way you are using the thermostats of the heaters to manage the daily on/off cycles which will wear them out faster but are basically a consumable and save the better temp controller to save the tank when a failure occurs.
 
Last edited:
I have a "single stage" Ranco Controller, I've been meaning to install. Can I attach two heaters to it (for redundancy). What's the difference between one and two stages? I bought the controller years ago, planning to deal with this issue, but like everything, never got around to actually doing it.

V
Do it!
Attach 3’ 250 watt submersible eheims (ebo jager if YOU are old like me)
Or an 800 watt titanium
Fyi
I use the same single stage ranco or aqualogic in every tank and system
10 gallons to 500
 
I have a 300w heater and a 500w titanium heater connected to the Apex. I chose titanium over glass, since glass breaks when accidentally running dry (like cleaning the sump). I also have a fan on another port to turn on when it gets too hot. All three port is controlled by temperature which matches the Milwaukee.

Inkbird units that I have tried:
  • Inkbird C929A : wifi unit that controls the heater. It was very easy to setup was very dependable and accurate for the time I used it which was about 1 year.
  • Inkbird wifi ITC-308 : wifi unit that controls both heater and cooling unit. Easy to setup per instructions, hard to configure because it never worked. Ordered 2 units, and both had the same defect and had to be returned. The defect is the unit doesn't respect the cooling off period. After searching the internet, and testing these units over a 2+ week period, realized that this is a common known issue, where many have experienced. My guess is that some units are defective and would be hard to configure to work.it i
Until I learn more about the Apex, it is currently used as my temperature controller :).
 
There’s a lot to be said for using what you know and are comfortable with, when it comes to safety/monitoring systems.

Setting up the InkBird controllers isn’t very intuitive but also isn’t difficult if you commit to figuring it out. I have 7 of them in use and have had no issues with any.

For heaters in medium and large tanks, I’m a fan of having 2 temp controllers per heater (can be InkBird+onboard thermostat or InkBird+Apex) and 2 undersized heaters to give multiple layers of redundancy against both fail-on and fail-off scenarios. And then TEST failure scenarios as best you can and make sure it does what you expect. Would definitely have the heaters in the sump, but that’s aesthetic.
 
There’s a lot to be said for using what you know and are comfortable with, when it comes to safety/monitoring systems.

Setting up the InkBird controllers isn’t very intuitive but also isn’t difficult if you commit to figuring it out. I have 7 of them in use and have had no issues with any.

For heaters in medium and large tanks, I’m a fan of having 2 temp controllers per heater (can be InkBird+onboard thermostat or InkBird+Apex) and 2 undersized heaters to give multiple layers of redundancy against both fail-on and fail-off scenarios. And then TEST failure scenarios as best you can and make sure it does what you expect. Would definitely have the heaters in the sump, but that’s aesthetic.
The issue with 2 undersized heaters is you don't have redundancy and you can't really effetely lead/lag them (that is mechanical speak to tun them on/off in succession). Mentioned lead/lag above but didn't didn't go into detail. Its like controlling an RC car with only a on/off control for turning left/right vs a variable control, or docking a boat using the on/off of the engine vs throttle.

The failure mode if you need both heaters to get you to temp, when one drops out (and it is actually cold) your heating power is now 1/2 and the water temp will fall to an unknown lower point based off the temp of your home, size tank, etc. You will need to address that quickly meaning your vacation is cut short, etc. OP has 3 heaters, so assuming they are all sized at 50%, he is good. Using equipment OP has, If you have 2 full size heaters with different set points and the primary heater fails, you can be notified if you are running say 1 or 2 degree under normal vs way under normal. That gives you plenty of time to fix a heater with no damage and you can chill in Hawaii for a few more days. PS, I Design and Build Commercial Buildings with heavy mechanical systems for data centers, life support systems, labs, large assembly areas like Entertainment Venues so If I use jargon that isn't clear, let me know. Also take my suggestions as Best Practices which does not always mean practical or in budget in a home fish tank. Everyones risk tolerance is different.

I see your often stated point that 2 smaller heaters will "save" the tank if a heater sticks on. It won't if the heater sticks on in the summer so that can be a false sense of security in a way. Having 2 systems to shut down a heater is really what you need in that instance which means you can safely use full size heaters, or three 50% heaters, etc. You have an Apex to take care of that so You are good, but proposing the alternate argument for those without a secondary back-up and just using a cheap heater + temp controller. Once you get an Apex or similar you have a lot more options such as power monitoring, etc.

Notification of a failure is actually the most critical, because if you don't know the system failed, you will just be operating on a back-up as normal until the secondary fails. That is the best reason to lead/lag your heaters if you don't have something like an APEX with power monitoring. This can tell you a heater has failed and give you the opportunity to fix it before the fish tell you it failed.
 
Back
Top