Heater Size Recommendation

[user 2204]

As some may already know, I'm in the process of building a 65H tank with a 20L sump. I am getting ready to get a few more pieces of equipment and the heaters are on my short list of things to buy this round.

My question is what size heater would people recommend. My plans as of now are to utilize 2 heaters on a controller with overall water volume around the 80 gallon mark.

I was looking at possibly going with dual Ebo 150W, would these be sufficent or should I look at maybe dual 200W? Would 200W be Overkill?

Cheers,
Alex

 

[the6goat6man6]

I use the JBJ True temp Titianium heater with digi controller and probe, excellent. All depends on your $$. JBJ says 300w for 60-100gal. So two of the ones you are looking at would work. I don't know about the Ebo heaters, but I know the JBJs are good.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Alex, a lot depends on how cold your room gets, if you have a controller, etc. I like ebos too. If your room stayed not much cooler than 68'-72' at night, a single 175-250w would do fine in most cases. Redundancies are great, but with heaters, less is better as the bigger concern is them breaking and staying hot in lieu of worrying about one quitting to put out heat. Now if your tank is in the garage, changes everything.

 

[user 2204]

Thanks for the input on the JBJ and Ebo's. I had looked into the JBJ but always go back to the Ebo's becasue I have a controller.

Mike,

The tank will reside in the formal living room in the house and at night the temps can dip to 58F before the furnace turns on. Also the tank will be next to an outside wall.

 

[Slate]

Like everyone has said it really does depend on the locational temp of the tank. For me I able to run one 250W even on my new 125gallon for a couple reasons. One being that my tank is set so I actually have a heater vent that blows half the air under my stand which assists my heater when temps start falling in the house. The other is that once up to temp it really takes a long time at lower temps for the water temp to actually change (gotta love the specific heat of water in winter). I have been monitoring this tank for a week now and it hasn't varied more than + or - 1F. I've never had a tank in an area that dropped below 60 degrees so that is a tough one for me to picture. However, I would think a single 300W would be able to keep the temperature pretty stable. If you want a dual set up I would go with dual 200W at least, I have a 150W stealth I use when setting up a 20g tank I use for QT/hospital reasons and it really doesn't do much in the way of heat output, I feel like the water in the sump would move too fast in the system for 150W heaters to maintain the temp if it was 58degrees.

 

[trido]

Two 150s is probably what I would do too. I just set up the 175 with two 250s on a controller.The room temp holds mid 60s all weekend on that tank and I expect they will do fine.