Heaters question, Better to get go large or small?

[solchitlins]

So maybe just get a 200 or 250 watt jager and buy one for backup when their on sale, and keep the spare in storage?

200 says it's rated for up to 106 gal., my tank is only a couple gals larger, maybe that one is least likely to cook the fish

 

[redwolffish]

Don't get them with digital monitors, they are never accurate and are more expensive


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[MakuCentauri]

I might not understand your post correctly, so please correct me if so.

The point of having 2 heaters is lost if one of them is actually strong enough to cook the tank. Each is supposed to be small enough so that if it was the only heater, it couldn't possibly cook the fish. It would only be strong enough to maintain the temp at a minimum, for example 80F, even if it was set to 120... Sized correctly, it could stay on 24/7 and never go past 80F, or 85F.

Using this point of view, a single heater that could raise a tank to 100, for example, is already too large.

While it's true that having 2 heaters does in fact double the risk of having an 'exploding heater' the odds are remarkably small for a decent heater. I've kep fish off and on for 30 years and never had an exploding heater. That of course proves little due to it's small sample size, but my guess is that it's quite rare.

By the same token, over heating seems uncommon, but it would likely be much more common that exploding, so the risks are both small, but not the same.


Lasty, it'd be intersting to understand how 1 heater of xxx watts is more efficient than 2 heaters of the same total xxx watts. My understanding is that watts=heat and that is basically the only formula. I don't see how using 2 heaters versus 1 is less efficient in any meaningful way.

Not sure where the 'exploding' heater bit came in sorry - I've never actually had a heater explode. I have had two that had the thermostat go and ended up cooking the fish in the tank though. - one was only a small breeder tank so no big deal, but the other was full of my prized fish

I'm not saying it's a terrible idea to have two heaters, just that the idea makes me nervous due to my own bad experience with a couple dodgy thermostats killing fish. I can certainly see the utility of having multiple heaters. For me though, the room I have my tanks in is usually fairly warm anyway so it's unlikely my fish would get too cold. As such, I'd rather only have the one heater and minimise the risk of another tank cooking. I do like the point though about having heaters that aren't strong enough to raise the temperature too high if the thermostat goes.

As for the other point about energy efficiency. I've seen people talk about high-power heaters being more efficient but didn't actually look into the reasoning so it could well be that there really isn't any efficiency gain. My main concern is avoiding another thermostat-induced mass die-off of fish. Coming home to hundreds of dollars of cooked fish is something I could do without having to go through three times!