Warmer weather tank questions

[Coralgurl]

How many heaters do you guys run in the summer in your tanks? Over the winter I had to add a second heater to my 55 and started the 180 with 2 in march. Now that it's getting warmer, my tank temp is hitting 81+, I've turned the heaters down to 77 but it's not helping during the day as the house gets quite warm. Dumb question but is it ok to remove one out of each tank? Just nervous it's too soon. I've noticed the evaporation has slowed down as well. Thanks

[Mike-fish]

shouldn't be a problem to do so. i keep mine in the tank year round but its also set pretty cool

[Slick Fork]

An extra heater won't make your tank any warmer, and removing one won't make it any cooler.

two heaters will just influence the maximum possible temperature and how fast it can get there. If they're both set to 77 and your tank hits 81 neither heater is doing any work. I'd leave them both in and not worry about it.

Also, no discussion of heaters would be complete without a warning to have them on a reliable temperature controller!

[Coralgurl]

Thanks, makes sense ^^^. No I don't have a controller, will look into one.

[Slick Fork]

I think the Ranco brand controllers are supposed to be pretty cost effective if all you want is temperature control.

In my experience, heaters ALWAYS stick to "on", they never fail in the "off" setting. So what I do is I have my controller set to keep the tank at something like 78 f and then set the temperatures on the individual heaters to something like 82f. That way, if the aquarium controller fails and leaves them on, the setting on the actual heaters should stop them from cooking the tank. Just adds a level of redundancy and safety to keep from having the cheapest piece of your setup destroy everything else.

[mark]

be amazed the amount of cooling a muffin fan blowing over your sump can give