Cobalt Malfunction

[RRsNano]

2 minutes ago, FreshwaterFishMan said:

depends, if it is bigenough for the tank then yes, but if you bought an undersized one then they will probably not take it back because it was not their fault.

Sorry, forgot to add the wattage. It's 75w and I have about 17g of actual water in my tank after rocks, sand etc. so it should be able to keep up.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, RRsNano said:

Sorry, forgot to add the wattage. It's 75w and I have about 17g of actual water in my tank after rocks, sand etc. so it should be able to keep up.

yup 75 watts should deffinitly be able to keep it up, probably return it, and just go for a 100 watt to make sure the next one can ultimantly keep up, or get an aquatop titanium 😄

[Clown79]

7 hours ago, RRsNano said:

Mines doing the opposite! It bought it new a few weeks ago. Finally got my tank setup last night and have been running it for 12hrs in a IM 25g lagoon. I have a RKL itemp probe and the heater can't get over 79.6f!? I tried with the heater in the 2nd chamber and it's not been in the display for 1 hour and it hasn't changed at all. I touched the heater and it's warm so it's on, it just can't keep up. My homes AC is 74-75f.

 

I have the temp on the cobalt set to 84f and my itemp is set to 80.5 with a hysteresis of +/- .03 . I checked with a digital thermapen thermometer and it read 79.2f so my itemp is spot on.

 

Should I return the heater?

 

 

EDIT: Heater size is 75w.

I used a 75w on my lagoom in the second chamber. It had no problem keeping it at 80.

 

79 is a perfectly fine temp for your tank

[DSA65PRO]

I’ve been using the Aqueon Preset Heaters, they are small so I can put three small ones in the Sump. They supposedly have a safety thermostat built in. I had the one failed no heat, that was in my mixing barrel. If you unplugged it and plugged it back in it would heat for awhile, which made me believe it did indeed have a safety thermostat.  

[erichK]

Please heed the warnings re Cobalt's sexy, hi-tech Neo-Therm heaters!  I'm a freshwater aquarist who prefers to see the lovely stuff you guys keep in its natural setting, (though the diving is getting taxing!), but have had up to half a dozen aquariums, up to 100 gals in size.  This is the WORST - and most overpriced - heater I have ever been stupid enough to buy.  No heater lasts forever, and I have a pile of nearly a dozen that heaters that  DON'T trust worthy anymore, as emergency backups or for heating water for changes.

 

SIX of them are Neo Therms, the original 4 I bought (on sale) and 2 of the 4 replacements sent when these fail.  A third of these at least is in temporary use because it  stops around  82 or so (in a 75 gallon tank that needs 79F.  It is like several of the discarded, stuck at too high a temp and  unadjustable by Cobalt's crazy single control.

 

I've spoken with Cobalt's Marine Engineer, who told me that there are no less than six thermometers in each of these heaters and this essentially confirms my judgement that the Neo-Therm is an over-engineered attempt to overcome basic physics,  The slim and sexy minimal profile works against effective heat dispersion while the ultra-precise temperature control wears out its heating mechanism with endless on-and-off cycles.  

 

Ironically, it is there to replace an  Ebo-Jaeger, which, with its large thick tube and much less hair-trigger temperature control mechanism, does conform to simple, reliable engineering, but sacrifices easy adjustability for the sake of its clumsy, hard to set and now stuck temperature indexing feature.

 

After 4 1/2 decades of keeping fish, I'm still looking for a reliable heater.