Good Reliable Water Heater

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
S

srf8257

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jul 20, 2013
6
0
16
Ontario, Canada
Hi All

I had a Tetra water heater for my 10G tank. It failed in the 'on' position and cooked my fish. The tank has since been restored and now holds a number of happy (breeding) Mollies.

I am now looking to purchase new heaters for this tank as well as my 15G pleco tank and my 55G mbuna tank. However, I am now obviously very apprehensive on selecting a heater in fear of having another disaster.

Would anyone have any suggestions as to what would be a good reliable heater?

Thanks!
 
I've used hydor for a long time now and they work great. I've used both in tank and inline heaters from them. This is the brand I used after some of my heaters gave me problems I've used them for years with no issues. I like them.
 
I'm a big EBO Jager fan. Run them for several years and no issues. 2 yrs ago had a Hagen I think on a 55g african cichlid tank stick on and kill/cook 80% overnight. Was nasty stinky in the office the next morning. On my big tanks I run a controller by Digital Aquatics for precision.
 
I have 4 Marineland Visi-Therm's. Two of them are over 10 years old. I've never had any problems with them.
 
I'm afraid that there are no heaters currently on the market that could be considered reliable. Every brand out there has failed at some point or another, some much more than others. An online vendor (and LFS owner) that used to be a customer of mine told me that Ebo-Jager had one of the greatest failure rates out of all the brands of heaters that they sold. So much so that they posted the following in big red bold print on their website, on the page where they listed Jager heaters for sale.

Please note that we find ALL of our other brands of heaters to have a lower failure rate than the Jager heaters do.

But again, they've had every brand out there returned over the years due to failing, most in the ON position.

If you are looking for a reliable method of preventing a heater cook your fish, I suggest looking at using a controller unit. Heater plugs into the controller, heater is set at say 81F, controller at 78F, and now in order for your fish to get cooked your contoller AND your heater must both fail.

I've been using controllers for years, and there are some fairly affordable stand alone units currently on the market. Some heaters even have them built in now such as Via Aqua titanium heaters, JBJ, etc.
http://www.jbjlighting.com/prod-true-temp-titanium.html
 
The older Visitherms were very reliable in my personal experience with them. Had a number of them last 8-10 years or more for me before replacement. After that I went through several types, including newer Visitherms, and none of them lasted very long before acting up (stopped heating, wrong temp, etc., have never had a heater cook my fish). Some would go bad in just a year or two.

Finally settled on Fluval M heaters and have had them now for 3-5 years (depending which tank, as I replaced them at different times) with no problems at all. Know someone with a lfs, specializing in nice cichlids, who last I knew said he had them in over 100 tanks and no problems. Not making a guarantee but that's my experience.
 
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