Another Heater Thread

[nzafi]

Quick, and not sure if we have discussed this. Are certain brand heaters considered to be more efficient than others. Figuring out heater situation for a 500g tank. Currently running 650w consisting of 3 aqueon pro heaters connected to a ranco controller. I was thinking off adding another 250w heater to get me to 900w.

I know that there are alot of factors and you cannot simply go by the 2-3watts per gallon rule. For example, my room temperature is about 70 degrees, I will be heating the tank to 76, and will have a cold water drip. Additionally, the tank will be acrylic and closed loop. This is why I am thinking 900w might be sufficient.

However, when researching heaters I saw that my aqueon pro 250w heater is only rated to 90g by the manufacturer, while eheim 250w heater is rated to 180g. It made me think that certain heaters are a lot more efficient than others. The eheim heaters are very large and glass which makes me think they can be more efficient than my aqueon which is small and made out of some durable unknown material (not titanium).

Any thoughts on this? Please do not go off topic onto heater reliability. Everyone has a love/hate relationship across many heaters and I don't want to debate heater reliability. I had a horrible experience with Finnex, my aqueons were leaking voltage (mitigated by ground probe now), and my eheim were very low and seemed to develop bubbles by the thermostat.

I really care about efficiency. Based on manufacturer rating, I would need 1250w for aqueon pro heaters, while only needing 600w from eheim to heat 535g of water essentially. That is a huge difference.

 

[duanes]

On tanks of that size I prefer to use a number or lower wattage heaters, just in case the heater gets stuck in the on position, a high watt one could cook the fish. If its smaller probably cannot cook them, and the others will turn off if temp rises too high.
Or if there is only, and one burns out, the others can take up the slack.
I have had both these problems happen, but most often it failed in the on position.

 

[Rocksor]

Yes, some heaters will sacrifice efficiency for size and look. I always check what the manufacturer recommends as the upper limit. If you go beyond the upper limit of the manufacturer's recommendation, the heater will fail sooner, in general.

 

[nzafi]

Thanks for the responses. And from a reliability stand point I do plan to run multiple heaters for the various fail safes. Just really focused on heater efficiency. The reason I am curious on this is because I have never really seen focus talk about it, so I am curious if some heaters are much better at actually heating a tank than others.

One thing I did read about, is that some folks do not keep their heaters fully submerged. They keep the dial in out of the water which is suppose to increase reliability.

 

[skjl47]

I really care about efficiency. Based on manufacturer rating, I would need 1250w for aqueon pro heaters, while only needing 600w from eheim to heat 535g of water essentially. That is a huge difference.

hello; I had a discussion along a similar line about space heaters with a friend. He had seen an ad about high efficiency heaters.
My take has been that heaters convert electrical current into heat with resistance of the wire. While there may be some mechanism that makes one sort of high resistance wire more efficient than another, I have no knowledge of it.
High resistance wire gets hot when electrons are forced thru. Even the lowest resistance wire will get warm. Unless I am missing something it should be pretty much a wash in terms of efficiency when converting electricity to heat.

Another aspect of these mfg ads is a lack of a standard. Do the different heater companies use the same standard when measuring the capacity of a heater. Does one start with 30 degree F water with an ambient air temp of 60 degrees F while another may start with 50 degree F water in a room with 60 degree F ambient temps? apples and oranges??

With some luck a forum member may have investigated this and may have some practical answers.
Good luck

 

[nzafi]

S skjl47 thank you for that response. Yeah, I wouldn't mind getting rid of my aqueon and running 600w of eheim heaters instead of 900w via aqueon. That will save me lots of $$ over the long term depending on how often they turn on.

 

[TexasMFK31]

On my plywood ~475

S skjl47 thank you for that response. Yeah, I wouldn't mind getting rid of my aqueon and running 600w of eheim heaters instead of 900w via aqueon. That will save me lots of $$ over the long term depending on how often they turn on.

I run 2 Eheim 300W heaters, the pump, and a wave maker. Keeps the tank at 80* well so far. Note* this is a plywood tank with 2 viewing windows.