You can buy those ranco controllers and wire them yourself and control any heater with them. I'd suggest doing that and getting two Jager 300s. I'm not completely sold on the titanium heaters. From what I've read titanium is a bad heat conductor, so I'd think that means it blocks a lot of heat inside of the heater instead of passing it to the water making it very inefficient. That might be why I only have seen them offered in 500 and 1000 watts.
heating 300 gallons
- Thread starter toehead11183
- Start date
I think you're getting confused. Titanium is actually great for heat transfer.
And they are offered in smaller sizes from many different companies.
Read the last line of this off Wikipedia.
A metallic element, titanium is recognized for its high strength-to-weight ratio. [7] It is a strong metal with low density that is quite ductile (especially in an oxygen-free environment), [2]
lustrous, and metallic-white in color. [9] The relatively high melting point (more than 1,650 °C or 3,000 °F) makes it useful as a refractory metal. It is paramagnetic and has fairly low electrical and thermal conductivity.
And this.
Heat transfer across materials of high thermal conductivity occurs at a faster rate than across materials of low thermal conductivity. Correspondingly materials of high thermal conductivity are widely used in heat sink applications and materials of low thermal conductivity are used as thermal insulation.
That leaves me to believe it would take more watts from a titanium heater to do the same job as a glass one.
A metallic element, titanium is recognized for its high strength-to-weight ratio. [7] It is a strong metal with low density that is quite ductile (especially in an oxygen-free environment), [2]
lustrous, and metallic-white in color. [9] The relatively high melting point (more than 1,650 °C or 3,000 °F) makes it useful as a refractory metal. It is paramagnetic and has fairly low electrical and thermal conductivity.
And this.
Heat transfer across materials of high thermal conductivity occurs at a faster rate than across materials of low thermal conductivity. Correspondingly materials of high thermal conductivity are widely used in heat sink applications and materials of low thermal conductivity are used as thermal insulation.
That leaves me to believe it would take more watts from a titanium heater to do the same job as a glass one.
That is pure titanium you are talking about aaronb. Mixed with other metal, titanium heaters are a lot better then glass, do to the fact the glass cools a lot quicker then titanium heaters in water in this case. Thus making the glass heaters work twice as hard as the titanium heaters.
Maybe if you keep your house at 80, your 500W would burn up in a day at my house that is at 70deg F.
I guess I wasn't thinking about how good of an insulator glass is. That makes me wonder if the titanium heaters are safe in the display tank, because the have less insulating properties. I didn't know if there would be risk of a fish getting burned.
Some titanium heaters come with heater guards or you can make one or some like to keep their heaters in their sumps. I personally don't like wires and cords all over the tank.
