Most reliable/cheap heaters

[duanes]

In over 60 year s of fish keeping, I tried them all, glass heaters, titanium heaters, In-Line heaters, and there was "not" a one I haven't had problems with.
Consider the hostile environment they are in, and what they do, constantly cycling on and off, yet In a cold climate, it may one of the most important pieces of life support equipment for your tank.
But even in Wisconsin I only plugged mine in, in late fall thru winter, into early spring.
All either falled while in the "on position cooking the fish, or in the off mode chilling them, or shorting out creating an electrical danger frying me.
I prefer getting two or three undersize, low wattage heaters (depending on tank size,) so in that way if the thermostat fails "on" on one, the others cycle off and don't cook the fish, or if one fails "off", the others take up the slack. Hopefully they all don't fail at once.
I also use grounding probes to lessen the severity of shock from heaters and other electric equipment exposed to wetness.

 

[Conner]

I'm just getting back into the hobby myself, but kept fish for about 15 years in a variety of tank sizes from 2.5gal all the way up to 220gal. I used a variety of heaters, and as far as I know I only had 1 fail on me. But like duanes, I prefer to undersize my heaters and use multiple instead of one appropriately sized or oversized heater. And while two lower watt heaters may cost more than a single higher watt heater, with two heaters you've got an automatic backup heater, in case one of them fails.

The only times I didn't use multiple heaters was in small tanks in the 2.5-15gal range. Anything 20gal or above always had (at least) 2 heaters. On my larger tanks, 125gal and 220gal, I used 3 heaters.

 

[james99]

I like aqueons myself. I usually get them at petsmart. Use their online price in store and they end up being super cheap.

 

[TheWolfman]

Eheim’s are probably the largest yet lower watt heaters out there and are reasonably priced. A few paired with a heater controller and a grounding probe seems to be the safest way to do it. If you can see water inside of your current heater then you should absolutely be replacing it immediately. Do not stick your hand inside of your aquarium if it is plugged in. I would bet that if you were to test your aquarium for stray voltage with a multimeter you will be shocked at the results (no pun intended).

 

[FESHMAN]

I don't know where you live, but the Atman heaters are pretty reliable for me. Combined with an inkbird that is. I stopped relying entirely on just heaters I've been disappointment by a few namebrands. But eheim seems less awful then the rest