Heater stuck on

[Jamie S]

Well I’m posting this in aquarium keeper screwups because I definitely should’ve caught it. My weekly water change for the biocube started off on the wrong track when I forgot to turn off the ATO. Luckily the alarm sounded shortly after I began the siphon so not much fresh water dumped in. After siphoning about 8 gallons of water out I went to the garage to fill up the bucket with fresh salt water. I put the pump in and filled up the first 4 gallons to dump into the tank. I dumped it in and went back to fill the bucket for a second go around. When I put my hand in the water to grab the hose I felt the water was scorching hot! I filled up the bucket and grabbed all of the ice packs that we had in the freezers and went to check on the tank. Luckily the fish seem ok and the temp only went up 1 degree so I think the fish will be ok but I’m worried about the coral. After the water in the bucket cooled down to 79 degrees I dumped the rest in and went back to see the temp in the mixing container. 105!
Right now the fish still seem ok as they are out and about but my zoas are closing up a little (that could be because the lights are going down) but my frogspawn is completely retracted as well as the acan. Thank god this only happened in the mixing container.
I’ve heard of heaters getting stuck on but never had it happen. I can’t wait to get my apex (my Christmas gift from my wife) hooked up to the 125 so I can make sure it doesn’t happen to that tank. I may now begin to plan how to hook up the biocube to the 125 sump so they can be 1 system and have both monitored all the time. It might have to be a Christmas break project. If anybody has hooked up a biocube to an external sump I’d like to hear how you did it.

 

[Salted]

Reading this makes me happy that I run two smaller heaters. I think eheim overestimates their heater's abilities. I bought a 150w which they spec for up to 80g for my 75g. Never got over 72* and was always on. Bought a second one and all is well. If one stuck on I'm reasonably comfortable thinking it's not powerful enough to heat up enough to really hurt anything. Down side is I was considering the inkbird so many here recommend but I would need one for each heater.

 

[amado]

You should definitely run a ink bird.
It’s a good idea even if you have a apex controller. For me heat controllers and ato are a necessity. It’s always best to use two smaller heater better than one big heater.

 

[erics210]

I am not sure what brand of temp controller I have but seeing the temp displayed, getting warning alarms beeping when temps increase or drop has been so awesome.

My heater is in my sump for my Red Sea s500, so if I turn things off to feed or get in the tank and FORGET to turn the return pump back on. I will get notified because the main display will cool a degree or 2 and we hear it and turn pumps back on.
I love having it. Didnt have it on my 210 and was always a guessing he.when I put my hand in there...lol.

 

[Jamie S]

I do have one big one for the 125 and unfortunately it’s too long for my sump so I have it my overflow. I may opt to go with 2 smaller ones but should I still have an inkbird as well? It seems like a lot of redundancy and an extra outlet needed.

 

[brokereefer]

Definitely go with an Inkbird at a minimum. There are some more expensive controllers but the Inkbird is probably the cheapest. Redundancy is your friend and it’s the controller that would save you from a heater that gets stuck on. 2 heaters only saves you if one of them fails. But if you had one stuck on, it would be the Inkbird that would shut them off to protect against the overheating.

You can plug 2 heaters into one Inkbird so it saves you an outlet rather than costing you an extra outlet.