Heater question

1100 Views 6 Replies 4 Participants Last post by bigrick94, Sep 6, 2021

bigrick94

Discussion Starter · Sep 6, 2021

I had to upgrade my heater as it was old and I didn't want no mishap, I also got an inkbird 308 as well, the issue I have is the heater I ordered is digital so when the inkbird reaches the desired temp it cuts everything on the heater off including saved presets on the heater which is a hyggar brand, to stop this I have to use the heater for heat instead of the inkbird but the heating light stays on so I don't think that's a good idea, in my other tank that's an analog heater I have the heater set at 78° and the inkbird at 77° and it works great, for the digital one I have to set the heater at 77° and inkbird at 78° which is the opposite so I don't lose power to the heater but again the heating light on the inkbird stays on, it's there a work around it should I just get an analog heater and send the digital one back? If that route which analog heater do you recommend (not digital) I looked at eheim but they are not advised to mount horizontal, ty in advance

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mourip

· #2 · Sep 6, 2021

If the Hyggar loses it's settings when the power is cut to it then it is a bad design. If you ever have a power outage or need to just disconnect it you will still lose the settings. If it were me I would send it back and get a traditional heater.

I use an Inkbird with my analog heater and it works great.

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Socratic monologue

· #3 · Sep 6, 2021

I agree -- a heater that can't recover on its own from a power cut is worse than worthless.

Personally, I use titanium elements on controllers (mostly Apexes, so there's a high and low temp alarm, too). You can use a glass analog heater as a heating element on a separate controller (I do this on my makeup water reservoirs because after enough time, anyone who uses analog heaters will accumulate a bin of them with glitchy thermostats), but the titanium elements eliminate the glass breakage risk.

Alternately, simply using two quality heaters that sum to a reasonable wattage to heat the tank is an option that helps avoid both overtemp (stuck 'on') issues as well as undertemp ( stuck 'off'), though they can be troublesome to dial in to play nicely with each other (often, only one of them takes all the heating load).

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jake21

· #4 · Sep 6, 2021

My hygger remembers the setting when the power goes out but it does have a tendency to flip from F to C.

Having said this the inkbird is a safety device; you should set it a little higher than the intended heat. Lets say you have your heater set to 76; set the inkbird to 80. This way if the heater 'breaks' and keeps heating the inkbird will catch it and turn it off before it bakes your fish.

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Socratic monologue

· #5 · Sep 6, 2021

jake21 said:
Having said this the inkbird is a safety device; you should set it a little higher than the intended heat. Lets say you have your heater set to 76; set the inkbird to 80. This way if the heater 'breaks' and keeps heating the inkbird will catch it and turn it off before it bakes your fish.

That's a common recommendation. It does add another element that can fail 'off', though, and depending on the ambient temp and/or how much the heater is overpowered for the tank volume, this can be a similar risk. In a cool climate, and with heaters sized so that they are unlikely to heat the tank to unsafe temps in a short time frame, it may be safer to eliminate the additional link in the chain.

Analog thermometers are far more likely than digital ones to fail 'on' simply in virtue of their thermostat design.

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jake21

· #6 · Sep 6, 2021

Well if the op has a similar hygger to the one i have it actually has an inkbird like controller which is digital. So you are adding a second 'safety' digital controller behind the one supplied with the heater.

Your point is taken but i still find it troublesome that the op heater is resetting in the first place which is in itself a serious issue esp if you live somewhere where power periodically goes out. While my power has been stable for the past 18 monhts (there was a long outage when a tornado took out the power lines); my parents house on the other side of town suffer power outages every other week.

Socratic monologue said:
That's a common recommendation. It does add another element that can fail 'off', though, and depending on the ambient temp and/or how much the heater is overpowered for the tank volume, this can be a similar risk. In a cool climate, and with heaters sized so that they are unlikely to heat the tank to unsafe temps in a short time frame, it may be safer to eliminate the additional link in the chain.

Analog thermometers are far more likely than digital ones to fail 'on' simply in virtue of their thermostat design.

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bigrick94

Discussion Starter · #7 · Sep 6, 2021

So I was mistaken, I thought the temp kept resetting as everytime the heater would come back on I would have to redo the celcius and also put it back to 76° F cause the heater would heat my tank to 77.8° in probably a minute, I decided to send the hygger back due to there's dual digital programs competing against each other, the inkbird with its temp setting and temp safety, the hygger with its settings as well, I feel it's much safer to run an analog heater with the inkbird so I ordered a eheim Yager analog style and am returning the hygger , also the hygger was to many Watts which I think is why it heated so fast.

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