I think my heater failed.

Dburr1014 · Mar 11, 2022

So I'm at work and my alarm on the Apex says low temp. Crap!
Thankfully, my wife is off every Friday.
Text my wife, are you up? Nothing
Text my wife again, need to talk to you!
Finally get a hold of her and talk her thru getting my spare in the tank. Temp was down to 74.5. Whew! Coming up to almost 76 now. I know I'll be trouble shooting when I get home.

So my 2 under powered jager heaters are plugged into my inkbird. The inkbird is plugged into my Apex.
I can see if it got stuck on, just turn it off.
But what do you do in this situation if it failed off?
A second inkbird set on lower temp and 3rd heater set higher plugged into it so it turns on?

How do you have yours set incase of stuck off or on?

Joe31415 · Mar 11, 2022

Ideally, with two heaters, the still working heater could keep the temperature from falling too fast and buy you some time to deal with it.
Beyond that, if it's broken (in the off position), there's not a whole lot you can do.
I think if you really wanted the extra level of redundancy, your best bet would be something like what you suggested. Get a third heater with it's own controller set to something lower. Plus, since you have an Apex, can you set it to send you a notification if that outlet ever pulls more than a few watts (something above the controller but below the heater wattage), so you know if it kicks on?

Another option might be to have a third heater in the water, but plugged into an outlet that's not powered up. Either let the Apex control it, similar to the inkbird, or if you get a low temp alert you can manually turn it on.

The only thing I wouldn't do is put it in the tank and let it's own internal t-stat keep it off until needed. It still has power running through the bimetal switch and could still fail. The trick, I think, is to keep this heater essentially 'brand new' until it's needed.

KStatefan · Mar 11, 2022

I have two independent heater systems Primary system is set to 78° F with a differential of 1° F The secondary system is set to 78° F with a differential of 2°F.