Who's in Control, Heater or Heater Controller

[Mrsirtang]

Hello All,

I recently had an Inkbird heater controller fail, that was only 3 months old. So, I contacted Inkbird support, and after a few e-mail exchanges with obvious trouble shooting steps, they sent a replacement in a timely manner. But my questions is, is it best to set the controller at the temperature that you would like to maintain, and set the heaters a few degrees higher ( I use Eheim heaters). Or, set the controller a few degrees higher, and set the heaters at the temperature that you would like to maintain?

 

[n2585722]

Mentioned above as well -

The vast majority of aquarium owners significantly oversize their heaters.

An ideally sized heater will run nearly a 100% duty cycle on the coldest (room) day of the year (be it winter or summer caused by AC, cold basement, high evap, etc.).

This creates a few ideal situations that both prolong the life of the heater AND add a layer of safety.

1) Far fewer temperature swings, as the heater will rarely cycle on/off and no chance of overshoot or hunting
2) Far less thermal stress on the seals and heating element due to thermal cycling
3) A very slim chance of catastrophic (and/or rapid) overheat in a fail-on situation
4) lower switched current is easier on ANY controller's components
5) smaller footprint and easier placement

figure out how many degrees your tank drops over 24 hours with no heat (or some fraction of that) and use that to derive the number of BTUs lost (1 BTU is the amount of heat required to raise 1 pound of water 1 degree F).

An electric resistance heater outputs 3.41 BTU/h per watt. So a 100W heater will impart 341 BTUs to the tank in 1 hour...

Buy the closes heater (nest size up) to your actual requirements, or better 2-3 small heaters that's total wattage adds up to the target wattage.

TLDR = a properly sized heater should run somewhere around 90%-95% of the time.

I agree except for the 90-95%. My cooling fans are on more that my heaters during the year. I had my heater temps set at 76 until I raised it recently to 77.5. My cooling fans are set at 78. Here is a graph of a years worth of temp data.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Not sure what makes no difference?

 

[BeanAnimal]

I agree except for the 90-95%. My cooling fans are on more that my heaters during the year. I had my heater temps set at 76 until I raised it recently to 77.5. My cooling fans are set at 78. Here is a graph of a years worth of temp data.

Makes no difference, during the coldest average day in the room, the heater should just barely be able to keep up.

 

[n2585722]

Makes no difference, during the coldest average day in the room, the heater should just barely be able to keep up.

Where I live it could be below 32 at night and be over 80 the next day. In fact we usually have quite a few days in the 80's during January. I have central air and heat so unless it is not working it stay between 77-73 in our house. In the last year there was three failures and the tank got above 80 degrees. Cooling fans do not work well if the humidity rises. A little over 2 years ago we did have an outside temp below 32 degrees for a week. We also had rolling blackouts that lasted the whole week. The power was on 50% of the time. The longest it was off was 4 hours but it was on 4 hours after that. The shortest period was 1 hour and it was on an hour after. The tank did get to just below 70 degrees and took a couple of days to get back up to 76 when the rolling blackouts were over. I did not loose any coral or fish. I am thinking that the worst thing would be for a heater to stay on and overheat a tank since I had no issue with mine getting down just below 70. I think it was 69.8 degrees. I do have a maximum on time set to 8 hours for my heaters if one stays on that long then I need to check on it. It will not turn off the heater. It just sends an alert if on that long. I do have the heating split between two heaters. They are both 50 watt heaters for a 42 gallon tank with a 10 gallon sump. The only months the heaters even come on is October to April. Only the last part of October and the first part of April if it they come on in April. Now that I bumped the heater setting to 77.5 from 76. I might get them to come on more. I did have a 110 gallon tank setup back in the 90's and I didn't even have heaters in it and never had any issues but I did not have any LPS or SPS in it.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Hi - having trouble following all of that but it doesn’t make a difference. The heater should only be large enough to barely maintain heat during the coldest realistic room day of the year, even if the other 3/4 (or 364 days or whatever) require a chiller. Vacation room temps should be taken into consideration

If you are worried about an event like furnace failure, you should have a spare heater to use for events like that.

 

[n2585722]

Hi - having trouble following all of that but it doesn’t make a difference. The heater should only be large enough to barely maintain heat during the coldest realistic room day of the year, even if the other 3/4 (or 364 days or whatever) require a chiller. Vacation room temps should be taken into consideration

If you are worried about an event like furnace failure, you should have a spare heater to use for events like that.

I am not worried about a furnace failure since I don't have one. I have a heat pump with emergency backup coils. It is an all electric house. The only time I have had no heating is when I had no power and when that happens the tank heaters will not work anyway. I have lived in the same house since 1978 and the longest that we were without power at any one time was overnight once. I do have a spare heater and I did use it during the rolling blackouts since it got into the 50's in the house at times and 2 50 watt heaters running intermittently will not keep it to temp. Even with the spare it got down below 70 during the rolling blackouts but that has only happened in this area the one time and I have lived in the area since 1967. It is more likely to happen now that they have so much in wind and solar. Neither work very well in cold weather and alternatives just sitting unused till needed would be very expensive.

 

[BeanAnimal]

I suggest investing in a small Honda generator. They are quiet and bulletproof with enough power to run a refrigerator, return pump, tank heater and small space heater. A wise investment given the investment in the aquarium and the fact that you are on all electric power.

I have a 22kW whole house generator, but still keep (2) small portable Hondas for emergency use.

You could also get an inverter that you can run from your automobile. Not ideal or efficient, but works in an emergency as well.

 

[n2585722]

I suggest investing in a small Honda generator. They are quiet and bulletproof with enough power to run a refrigerator, return pump, tank heater and small space heater. A wise investment given the investment in the aquarium and the fact that you are on all electric power.

I have a 22kW whole house generator, but still keep (2) small portable Hondas for emergency use.

You could also get an inverter that you can run from your automobile. Not ideal or efficient, but works in an emergency as well.

My luck the generator would not start when needed since I probably would not use it for years. I do have an inverted I could use with my car though.