Thoughts on heaters

[chemaholic]

I had a heater fail on me last night in my frag tank. Luckily it failed off and not on. Lucky too that I had a spare. What I plan to do going forward is order all new heaters for my frag tank and DT and get two half sized heaters rather than one big one. They will still be controlled with my Apex and the heater control will be the failsafe. I will be replacing them annually as well.

Since I am replacing them annually does it make sense to go with the titanium heater over the Jager one? The BRS titanium is double the price of the Jager. I have had great luck with both the BRS titanium and the standard Jager. I am just not sure the cost difference is worth going with titanium since I will be changing them out every single year.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[ichthyoid]

I have never had an Eheim-Jager, or formerly Ebo-Jager, heater fail on me (knock on wood!). In almost 40 years.

I also use 2x @ 1/2 the wattage. Statistically favored risk, by dilution. 3x is even better! Ranco controllers have had a similar level of reliability, as a backup.

 

[myvwrock]

I'd use an Eheim Jagger heater. And underrated for the tank size

Sent from my LM-K500 using Tapatalk

 

[DiefsReef]

I have 2 300W BRS Titanium in all my tanks connected to Ink Bird WiFi controllers and plugged into the Apex. I dont use Apex to control them but have Alarms setup and kill the plug if temp goes to high.
I also have a Coralvue Controller with temp probes to my 2 main display tanks that give alarms for high/low temp.
I've read controlling heaters with the EB's wears them out to fast. I have had all heaters in place for over two years now with no failures on the heater themselves but have had to replace several Ink Birds.
I can usually tell when the controller is going out by alarms setup on either the Apex or the Coralvue controller. I set one heather to be Primary with the other just a few deg lower so if one fails the other will take over.

I think this works best for my peace of mind but its probably over kill. For me, I will still spend the extra money on the BRS heather because I think its a good product.
I have a Eheim Jagger but use it for salt mixing station and had no issue.

 

[chemaholic]

Thank you all very much for the guidance! I really appreciate it. I like @ichthyoid 's advice on going with three heaters. I will see about giving that a go.

I also think @DiefsReef makes a good point about the control strategy. I think I will switch my Apex to act as an alarm and a high temp shutoff and let the built in controllers handle the temperature.

 

[hiimsean]

I’ve ran Jager in fresh and salt for over 15 years and never had an issue. I was doing some cleaning this morning and found a hand full of jagers that I’ve used years ago that are still running I’m keeping as backup.

With your apex you should have the ability to turn off any port at a specific temp.

 

[Adam]

I'm the same with multiples. I've got 4 in the display and 2 in the troughs but I'm going to add a 3rd.
In the display I've got 1 800w Finnex titanium and 3 300w Jager's. I also run 2 temp probes. One in in the overflow, this also alerts me if the flow gets cut and the temp drops, and one probe in the sump.

With EB8's use outlets 1-3 or 5-7 for the heaters and let the Apex control them setting the heater's internal thermostat or temp controller a degree higher than target.
With EB832's it doesn't matter the outlet but use a secondary temp controller and let it do the heavy lifting for the cycles and set the Apex to kill the power at a half degree to a degree higher than target.

Redundancy with critical functions in this hobby will save your ass. Use it where ever possible.

 

[billyocean]

.....hot topic

 

[chemaholic]

I have two coming for my DT and three for my frag tank. I plan to add a second temperature probe. I was not sure where to put it but the overflow makes good sense to me.