Heater Sizing

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Doug

Wow Brad. 400w should easily keep your 180 at a set temp. And to boot you have a top. Must be a heater not doing its job.

Well, the kid turned the heat off, so it was pretty cold in that room overnight. But ya, I would have thought they'd keep it at temp. Maybe time to replace heaters -lol
Oh, and no top, just open.

[MitchM]

I'm pretty happy with my hot water pex loop heating my tank.
I can't really say how many watts I would otherwise be using though.

[jorjef]

120 gallons 2 x300 watts.

[kacairns]

Different heater brands list different tank sizes based on wattage, guess it all boils down to efficiency and design/placement as well.

ie Aqueon 250w Pro heater is rated for aquariums upto 90g, where as Eheim Jager at 250w is rated for 106g - 159g

[Craigdillman]

I think I'm going to get in the habit of changing heaters every year they pretty cheap and for how important they are probnalu worth it

I keep my tank at 81 degrees and my room temp is 21 Celsius both controled by reef keeper they seem to do the job

[craigwmiller]

I have 4x 200w Jager's on 300 net gallons. (415 gross gallons just counting tank glass sizes)

I have set 2 heaters each on 2 temp probes. The system stays stable with 3 heaters but not much margin for failure. I figure with 4 smaller heaters one can fail ON or OFF and not cause me any grief.

[gregzz4]

That chart puts me right where I want to be with wiggle room
Ambient is 74 and tank is 79, so my third heater is a failsafe

I've always run closer to 5 rather than 3 watts/g

[hillegom]

my understanding is that you have to take the ambient room temp into consideration. Once you have the proper heaters for the size of aquarium, the heaters only increase the tank water, 10-15 degs above the ambient room temp.

I found a chart on line. Scroll down to bottom of page, under ambient temperature.

http://mayerspet.com/?p=1010

[Simons]

I have 2x500 W titanium heater on my 250gal no issues keeping my tank in the 25c range overnight. My Nest house thermostat is programmed to drop the temp to 19c during the night. No issues keeping my tank in the basement toasty.

[BlueTang<3]

I got 600 gallons of water now, before we were running 3 500w heaters and they ran all the time. House was at 18 Sump is covered tank enclosed in canopy. In the winter we turn the heat up to 22 in the house now and the heaters hardly run keep the tank at about 25