wierd problem

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golcondorus

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 22, 2006
863
4
0
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Oregon
I have kind of a wierd problem i think. I have a 75 gallon aquarium on one of those stands that fit two tanks, on the bottom i have a blue tongue skink. The lighting from the blue tongue skink cage heats up the aquarium from the bottom a bit during the day. so, to make things stable i recentlly turned my heaters up a little bit to get the temp over what the light brings it to, so its the same all the time. for some reason, when the lights are on my heater keeps heating even after it gets 80 degrees, but when the lights turn off, the temperature goes down to 78 without the heater kicking on? shoudnt the heater know the temperature regardless of if there is something else heating the water? shouldnt it just stay off if it is hotter during the day? its a brand new heater so i dont think it is that. does anyone have any ideas on this, other than buying and trying a new heater?
 
The thermostats on most heaters are not 100% accurate. It seems like your heater is set to heat the tank to 78 degrees. The heat from the light below brings the tank up to 80 degrees. If you want to test your heater, leave the lights on the skink cage off for a day and see where the temperature goes.
 
no, thats not quite the problem, its hard to explain.
so, the lights heat the tank up to 80, so, i set my heater to 80 while the lights were off to test it. it worked fine, the heater kept the tank at 80, but, when, in the morning, the skinks lights turned on, the heater kept heating past 80 and up to 82. so why is it doing that, it works perfect when the lights are off but not when they are on. really doesnt make sense to me, anyone????????????????????
 
Where is the thermometer in relation to the heater? If you had an external decal-style thermometer, it might be possible that the heat from the skink tank is heating it up to 82F while it's still 80F inside the tank where the heater is.
 
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