PDA

View Full Version : New tank needs a heater...but what size?


Lessgo
04-15-2016, 03:43 AM
I have order a new 300 gallon tank (72x30x32) and it's getting a 135 gallon sump.
It's going in my basement, and the closet window to the tank is 25 feet away. It will have no chance of getting natural light.
The tank will be lit by 3 x 360 kessils.
Skimmer is a reef octopus sss 5000
House temp is usually 69 to 71 degrees

But where I'm at a loss is what do I need for heaters. I've had some tell me I need dual 400watt heaters, all the way up to 1800watts of heaters.
Can anyone help me as to what I need for heat.

Thanks for the help

spit.fire
04-15-2016, 04:16 AM
I'd go 2*300w heaters, if one fails its not going to cook your tank

Myka
04-15-2016, 04:20 AM
I'd go 2*300w heaters, if one fails its not going to cook your tank

I'm not sure that will be enough (especially in a basement), but I agree on the multiple heaters point. I'm thinking more along the lines of (3) 250W heaters, or start with (2) 300W and see if you need more.

Lessgo
04-15-2016, 05:05 AM
Yeah I totally agree on the 2 heaters.
Thanks so much for info on the size range. That's exactly what I am looking for.
Appreciate the advise:biggrin:

mrhasan
04-15-2016, 05:09 AM
Your net volume will approximately be 350 gallon. To heat up that volume of water from 69°F to 78°F, you will need around around 760W of heat for an hour. With the ambient below so low, your heater will have to work overtime and will probably remain on for most part of the day. I always prefer to use a bit of an underpowered heater to decrease the chance of overheating but you can take Mindy's suggestion and get x3 250W heater. Or if you are feeling to add more redundancy, you can go x5 150W and have them connected to Ranco and you are golden. Ranco have hysteresis built within so the heater won't keep on turning on and off for 0.1°F change and it is an industrial grade temperature controller and pretty much bulletproof. Ehime Jager is the way to go for heaters :)

Scythanith
04-15-2016, 12:28 PM
I have about 330g of total volume and run 3 x 250w ebo jagers. They are on about half of the time but the back fishroom is pretty warm so there isn't a lot of heat loss there. I let the profilux control the heaters. They also have their own internal cutoff but I set it about a half degree higher than the profilux cut off. A little redundancy never hurt.