Temp & Heater ??

[Awibrandy]

As some may know I've had 2 devastating insidents with stealth, and won brother heaters. The won brothers' boiled my fish back in 2003, and this past spring my stealth broke, and poisend my most of my fish.
I vowed not to use heaters anymore, but I like my house on the chilly side. I don't like heat.:tongue1: I keep my home around 67 to 68. With this in mind I decided that it was unrealistic to run my tanks without the heaters since my summer temps hover around 84.
I bought 2 EBO Jager heaters since I've always heard how GREAT they are. They sat in their boxes until a week or 2 ago when I finally installed them.
Now here is the thing that has me confused. I set them at 77, but they are constantly coming on, and setting off my fans. This morning I decided to check something in my tank, and the water felt warm so I looked at the cheap thermometer on the side of my tank. It read 81 degrees. I thought to myself this had to be wrong so I checked the temp with my ph/temp meter which read the ambient air temp by the tank to be 67, and it also read 80. Now I had turned them both down to 75, and they are still quicking on.

What the heck is going on?:irked:

 

[18oreefer]

In my experiance with heaters there all junk and you can never go by the temp written on them. The best thing you can do for your temp control is put them on a Ranco and set the temp there. I have had the same Theo heaters on a Ranco in my tank for almost 3 years now and have never had a problem. Your fish will thank you for it. I think there might even be one in marketplace that i have seen recently.

 

[Dre]

Is the themometer on the outside or the inside of the tank?I use the one that goes inside the tank as well as a DTC to adjust the heaters .It may take a day or two to get it right.Check to see if the Ebo Jagar is fully submersible.They have some that are not full submersible.

 

[Awibrandy]

The ebos I have are so retard.:irked: There are 2 small lines within like a .25 of an inch of each other, the top line says above here, and the bottom one says not below here. I keeper all heaters in my sump. I like as little equipment in the DT as possible.
I might just put them on my ranco, but I guess then I have to buy something else to control my fans.

 

[Awibrandy]

Dre, what's a DTC?

 

[Mreefer]

practically all heaters do that. they are miscalibrated. this is a problem in the summer for me as the heater activates even though it is set at a lower temp than that of the tank water forcing me to shut them off. it adds up to 5 degrees in temp to my tank! my theo heaters are doing it now! the only heater i know that doesn't do it is the visitherm stealth. i've owned 2 with no problems. how did the stealth poison your tank? it's enclosed in hard plastic. as for the jagers, i think you can recalibrate them, at least the one i used to own. you pull the blue button on the top out, then rotate the dial to match the water temp based on your thermometer, and push the blue button back down. those will be your new calibrated settings.

 

[Keith P]

Ranco makes a dual controller that can control both the heating and fans.

I think EBOs are adjustable. Isn't there a way you pull the pin on top so you can recalibrate the temp ring? It's been a while since I messed with my EBO. Also, I believe the new EBOs are submersible, but for liability reasons they state it's not.

Aren't stealth heaters sealed? Can you tell me more about how your's broke? I just "upgraded" to all stealths for piece of mind. Now I'm not too sure about them...

 

[Awibrandy]

Thanks Mreefer! I will try that.
As to your question on what happened with the old stealth(which wasn't all that old either about a year old) read here.
Click here: Disaster has struck ;( - Manhattan Reefs

Last night one of my circuit breakers popped. No problem, go and reset it. As I reached the first floor I smell an awful smell. We start looking for where the smell is coming from. We found what we thought was the cause of not only the smell, but that of c/b pop. The timer to my MH does not have the ground therefor I had used an old adapter I had laying around. Well, the adapter had melted and one of the prongs was stuck in the timer. OK, so I throw it away. I got another timer and a brand new adapter and figuered all was well and went to bed.

This morning I get up to the smell even stronger. I thought it was coming from the basement where the c/b box is, so I went and checked. All seemed in order and I had to get my granddaughters up and off to school. When I returned from taking them to school I found my sohal dead, the coral beauty and one of my highfin wrasse appearing to be dead. When I lifted the canopy to removed the sohal and the others the same smell from last night hit me again, I turned on my pcs and waited, only 2 fish came out to greet me.;( I couldn't do anything as I had an appt. with my oncologist. I checked the power heads and all other equipment that were easily accesible and those that were working I left on. The ones that I could not check I unplugged and left for my appt.

I returned to find 5 fish out, purple firefish, firefish, yellow coris, and the radiant looking pretty bad.
I have just about emptied out the tank of all the life rock to find the rest of the fish. As of this moment I have 6 confirmed dead fish and several others looking totally in distress. Corals all seem to be fine.

My son and I have been checking to see what could have happened and the only other thing we have found is one of the heaters dead and stinking up a storm.
I haven't really had to much time so the only pars I've checked are as follows;
PH 8.29 -8.3
Temp. 75.5
cal 470
trates 0
PH and temp. checked with HM digital tester
cal and trates with salifert.

I don't know what else to do except to replace carbon, gfo and 40 gallons of water which is all I have at hand.
If you want to reach me on my cell KathyC has it and has my permission to give it to anyone that may be of help................