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So this may be a total noob question, but so be it, I want to do this right with my first saltwater tank. I currently have my heater in the tank, because the one I bought was like 1" too long to go in my return pump chamber on my AIO 24g. So I just got a Cobalt heater that will fit in that chamber. Is there any trick to adding a new heater and removing the old one, so that I don't mess with the water temp too drastically? Do I just set the new one to my current temp of 79, plop it in and let it run for a bit and then pull the other one out? Having 2 in at a time won't hurt it right...they should turn off when they are at the target temp, right? Thanks!!

Hi everybody, I have a 30cm cube aquarium that I am going to set up as a reef, I know a lot of people will say that a 6 Gallon tank is way to small, but I have experimented with a thew different marine aquariums now and I have done a lot of research and I feel I am now ready to set up a tank of that size. I have a hang on the back filter that I am going to use as my filtration and to create sufficient water movement and I had planned to get a small heater for the tank that would be able to fit inside the filter itself, however after reseaving the filter I realised that it was about 1cm too small to fit the heater I had planned on getting. ☹️ Does anyone have any reliable heater suggestions (The heater needs to be under 15cm in height) the heater also needs to be able to heat around 5-6 gallons of water. Thanks in advance.

Read through some more horror stories from heater-failures today and it made me want to attempt a solution. I was thinking of using 15 or so feet of H2 PTFE Fluerotherm run into a cheap-insulated lunchbox or cooler (maybe just one of the cheap styrofoam boxes with a water-proof coating or bag inside) of around 1-2 gallon capacity which would house a 50-100gph pump and the heaters from the display. The line would then be run out to the rear-chamber of the display-tank and through a dozen or two feet of coiling, as you would see in a chiller, before returning to the reservoir to be re-heated. I see no reason why the material wouldn't be reef-safe (since it's food-safe and used to coat pans) and it's getting in the ballpark of having the same thermal-conductivity as some metals (while still being an inert electrical-insulator). I figure the relatively-small volume and flow-rate means that the tank wouldn't just be protected from shorts, but also from overheating - with the potential to actually probe the reservoir-itself to a kill-switch for redundancy. And since I only need to keep things around 6-10F above ambient I'm not exactly trying to boil things. My two main Ideas for operation would be: -Keep the reservoir hot, around 85+ F and run the pump on a temp-probe in the display, the downside to this of course is that it would react sluggishly and potentially-cause consistent, small temperature-swings. -The second idea is, if possible, to match the display-tank's goal-temp (75F) and run the pump 24/7 during the winter. If there is enough mass and energy being imparted into the system then I wouldn't have to worry about swings at all. The downside is that this method would likely need to approach the peak flow-rate for airline tubing (around 150 gph) and has the potential to underheat the system if the ambient temperature falls too low (in which case I could run my redundant heater on a probe and have it kick-in to further heat the reservoir's water). Any insane folks out there care to entertain my crazy ramblings for a second lol? Would love feedback, couldn't find too many folks trying to DIY heater-coils, just allot of chillers haha. And, while I could probably set up the math for mass-flow-rate --> heat transfer, it doesn't really take into account the liquid cooling in the system itself and is an absolute-headache, so I would probably go the trail-and-error route instead. @Wonderboy Your tanks are DIY haevens, what do you think?

just got this replacement from cobalt few months ago. took forever so i had to buy a new one while waiting on them... brand new SOLD

I was sitting by my tank trying to get pictures of my new fairy wrasse and he jumped out into the back chamber. I started pulling things out to get him and saw that in the return pump chamber there was almost no water and my heater (Via Aqua) was exposed. After unplugging everything, my water level dropped a little over half an inch. Should I replace the heater? I don’t know how long it was exposed and if it came on in that time.

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Just starting a 2.5 gallon pico and I need a reliable heater. What are you guys using?

upgrading to a much bigger tank and getting rid of some of my nano stuff all LESS THAN A YEAR OLD MP10 QD(not wireless) still has warranty!! $175 OBO marineland 100 watt heater - 10 fuge light (aqua gadget) 20 4 stage RO/di unit with new carbon and sediment filters - 80 OBO Reef glass nano skimmer (with air pump) $50 Tunze Nano ATO (works flawlessly) $70 OBO AI prime HD (2nd gen) with mounting bracket! works and looks NEW! $175 OBO (still has warranty) Please PM me for pics and payment discussion Paypal only of course goods and services! shipping on EVERYTHING listed here will be FREE OF CHARGE!! thanks for looking!

Hey guys! I re-started my 10g tank a few weeks ago after having torn it down last year. I have tried three different heaters that I had (2 aquatops and 1 tetra), but the water temp isn’t remaining constant with any of them. The water is up to 78 even though the thermostat is set at 72. The room where it is in is usually about 66-72 degrees. Often I have 2-5 degree temp swings. When I had my 65g reef tank, this kind of temp swing would’ve freaked me out, but now that I have a nano tank I am wondering...are these kind of temp swings normal? will they harm fish corals or inverts? Or should I just buy a different heater (what would recommend)? Thanks!!

So I run a 100W Neo-therm cobalt heater on my tank and it was purchased about 2.5 years ago. Yesterday I noticed that the heater had its temperature set to the lowest setting (66 degrees) when it is usually set to 78. I figured a snail must have wedged itself near the button or something so I moved the heater to the front of the tank so I could watch it. I reset it to 78 and watched it all night and it remained at 78. This morning I woke up and again- the setting was 66 degrees yet the tank temperature was 78! Has anyone encountered issues with these heaters? I will be pulling it immediately and calling the company. I've read online that people "reset" them by unplugging for 30 min but it is stupid to take any risk.

Yesterday I decided to make water for my normal water change and stuck my normal Neotherm 100W Heater on the inside of my 5 gal bucket as normal and left for a brief time, to return home to a hot/smokey smell. I noticed my mixing bucket had black small drops of "oil" floating in it and the heater had no lights on when plugged in. I immediately unplugged it and let it cool and removed it to find a huge crack down the side, after I placed it down the whole back panel cracked off. I noticed severe burn marks... Upon further investigation the heater was shorted to the water (electrifying it). I then contacted Neotherm who will be sending me a new one, but my trust in this brand has gone down significantly..... any thoughts on this brand?

Baby, It's Cold Outside! ❄ Turn up the heat with a new aquarium heater!

I was going to forego putting a heater in my Biocube 14 since I live on the gulf coast (its warm down here) but have decided to be better safe than sorry. That said, any recommendations for a heater that can be placed in one of the chambers (I assume the first chamber) in a biocube 14?