Heater talk

[Spudsly]

I recently started quarantining the first fish for my 180 and I'm a little worried about how "good" my quarantine setup is. I bought a brand new Ebo Jager 100w for it (it's 10g) but the temperature systematically fluctuates between 80 and 78 (doesn't turn on till below 78 and then turns on till it's 80). I asked if this was ok on RC and got kinda laughed away talking about how uncontrolled nature is etc... not very helpful. I just came home and it was 82.4. What is going on with this? Do they not make heaters that keep tight ranges anymore? I found the same thing with my ebo jagers for the 180 before I got a controller. Should I just transfer him to the DT? Basically I'm trying to be careful but I just feel like despite my best efforts the QT is an enormously more stressful environment.

 

[mpsteve]

First the 100w heater is way to big for a 10g tank. It can over heat the tank in a few mins if it ever fails. Try a 50w and ehiem makes great heaters. A few deg is fine in my opinion

 

[this is me]

Steve is correct. 100w for 10gallon is way too much.
Reliable temp control on a heater never existed. Always use an external controller like the apex.

 

[jah-hoeva]

I've never had any issues with bigger heaters than necessary in any of my qt's. I use 50 & 100w in 10 gallon tanks. I also use 100 & 200w heaters in my 20 gallon qt's. (whatever I have clean at the time) As long as the heaters are good quality and in good working order. And like stated, a couple degrees is fine.

 

[Spudsly]

Yeah, I decided to slightly oversize it because the room it is in is pretty cold and I had issues with a previous used 50w. I'm just surprised because these heaters are surely good enough to hold the temperature stable so why don't they? If it's to avoid rapid switching, why doesn't it say that anywhere? Why can't the range be controlled. It just makes it very hard to calibrate or get a good feeling for what's happening the way it is now. I basically had to sit there and watch it for an hour and a half.