every heater is diferent never reley on one it is best to have two in the tank first reason is backup in case of failure and the second is the heaters don't have to work as hard and from experiance always use completly submersables because no matter what the things always seem to sink at one point or another and if the heaters on the bottom of the tank you have no worries about temp varations during water changes.
Lifespan of heaters?!
- Thread starter puffer_girl
- Start date
Seem to have a little moisture inside one of mine....... Is that normal? Not water at the bottom where it's leaking in.... Just specks of water right above the heating element. Noticed it when I went to slide it closer to the filter....
That is not really good, moister leads to corrosion which leads to failure, I would plan on replacing it.
always have one as a backup, i learned the hard way, so now i keep at 250 watt as backup in case something goes wrong. 
guppy said:
i agree with guppy replace it and check out the new stealth heaters theyre all plastic and submersable mines been working good so far and not really expensive
Will definitely replace that one...... Just for some reason got paranoid..... Guess the best thing to do is keep a back up (plastic submersible) and continue to check on a regular basis. Though maybe there was a "rule" where should be replaced every three years or something..... Guess not!
