Heaters for 240gallon

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Ok, so I plugged my heaters into the InkBird unit for the first time last night. Temp on the unit is set at 78F. Woke up this morning and the tank temp was 76.7 and the heaters were not on. When I programmed the unit I set the temp diff margin at 1 degree. What am I doing wrong?
 
Ok, so I plugged my heaters into the InkBird unit for the first time last night. Temp on the unit is set at 78F. Woke up this morning and the tank temp was 76.7 and the heaters were not on. When I programmed the unit I set the temp diff margin at 1 degree. What am I doing wrong?
 
What do you use to measure the temperature? Perhaps your heaters can't keep up? Have you tried plugging the heaters directly, without the controller to rule out possible probe issue with the controller as it may think the tank is at different temperature.....

I have a digital thermometer and a TDS meter with temp display, and both measure almost the exact same temperature which stays nearly rock solid at around 78.8F. I don't have fancy equipment, just 2 jagger heaters 300x each. I've kept the window slightly open due to humidity almost all winter...

If you're certain the thermometers are not giving you some wild measures, then look into new heaters as that's exactly how all my old heaters went, they would just get "weaker and weaker". I know some people's ones got stuck on too high temp but all mine went the other way, stopped heating altogether.
 
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When you set the temp and temp differential, did you hold the Set button to save the settings? At first, I went into settings, made the adjustments and then just let it time out to go back to normal operation. However, that doesn’t save the settings. You have to hold the Set button again after making changes in order for the InkBird to save them.

If you did that and you are still having the problem, then I would turn the heater up as it’s internal thermostat might be turning off lower than the InkBird.
 
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Fish Tank Travis said:
When you set the temp and temp differential, did you hold the Set button to save the settings? At first, I went into settings, made the adjustments and then just let it time out to go back to normal operation. However, that doesn’t save the settings. You have to hold the Set button again after making changes in order for the InkBird to save them.

If you did that and you are still having the problem, then I would turn the heater up as it’s internal thermostat might be turning off lower than the InkBird.
Click to expand...

Just went through and programmed the unit again. While the temp saved it appears the temp diff did not as it was still set at 2 degrees. I saved the settings by holding the "set" key and it appears to have done the trick. Heaters are on. Thanks for the quick response.
 
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cjdesmit said:
Just went through and programmed the unit again. While the temp saved it appears the temp diff did not as it was still set at 2 degrees. I saved the settings by holding the "set" key and it appears to have done the trick. Heaters are on. Thanks for the quick response.
Click to expand...
I am thinking this was the same issue I had initially, that was why I went through reconfig and set it all again. I would bet things are working much better for you now? I have still yet to see less than 79.6 when it's set to 80.0, I have even seen 80.1, etc.

Hope yours is doing well now.
 
Mine is holding temp well. I have it set to 80 currently and like you, I have yet to see a difference of more than 1 degree and is typically within .5.

Thanks again for all the help!
 
That’s good.

I actually just read about the Calibration feature today, when I was replacing one of my temp probes. It is not actually a calibration of the unit, but it is an offset feature.

Basically, the unit on my 220 was still working very well, but it was reading about 4 degrees off from the digital thermometer I had on the tank. I keep a spare digital thermometer to check the others and used it to find out that the InkBird probe was at fault and was reading too high, so the tank was about 4 degrees cooler than I had it set at. Anyway, this InkBird 308 was the older style that had a direct hard wired probe instead of the “headphone jack” type. So, I got a replacement, which comes with the new connector that wires inside the InkBird, and swapped them out. Needed to unsolder the old probe and then solder in the new piece with the female connector on it to accept the new style probe. After doing all of this, the InkBird was still reading about 4 degrees off. So, I read the manual section about calibration and found out it is really just an offset setting that you can use to match the temp on the InkBird to the temp on another device, such as my digital thermometer. Now, the InkBird matches my thermometer exactly, and my tank is going to operate at the correct temp again.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be as descriptive as possible.

P.S. I am pretty sure that every time you switch the unit from F to C, it returns all settings to default.
 
Fish Tank Travis said:
That’s good.

I actually just read about the Calibration feature today, when I was replacing one of my temp probes. It is not actually a calibration of the unit, but it is an offset feature.

Basically, the unit on my 220 was still working very well, but it was reading about 4 degrees off from the digital thermometer I had on the tank. I keep a spare digital thermometer to check the others and used it to find out that the InkBird probe was at fault and was reading too high, so the tank was about 4 degrees cooler than I had it set at. Anyway, this InkBird 308 was the older style that had a direct hard wired probe instead of the “headphone jack” type. So, I got a replacement, which comes with the new connector that wires inside the InkBird, and swapped them out. Needed to unsolder the old probe and then solder in the new piece with the female connector on it to accept the new style probe. After doing all of this, the InkBird was still reading about 4 degrees off. So, I read the manual section about calibration and found out it is really just an offset setting that you can use to match the temp on the InkBird to the temp on another device, such as my digital thermometer. Now, the InkBird matches my thermometer exactly, and my tank is going to operate at the correct temp again.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be as descriptive as possible.

P.S. I am pretty sure that every time you switch the unit from F to C, it returns all settings to default.
Click to expand...
Dang, I think I would have rather have the headphone style temp probe to be easily replaced!
 
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