I have always had 2 smaller heaters to protect my tank from one heater being locked in the on position from over heating my tank. This is exactly what happened, about 4 months ago the temperature in my tank started to rise and I did not notice it. One of my older hagen heaters (150watt) must of locked in the on position. It could have been earlier but I only started to notice it. I check my temperature in the tanks once a week. I noticed that the reading was 82 degrees. I keep a detailed log of my fish tank and all its parameters dating back to the day I set it up. I thought summer temperature a little higher no big deal.
It was around 4 to 5 months ago I started having problems I lost a couple fish one of them was a large yellow tang I had had for several years. (I hadn't added a fish for several years). It was eating, doing well and then one day I couldn't find it. i looked everywhere. I lost another smaller fish (pipe fish about the same time). Loosing those fish caused my nitrates and phosphates to spike for about 3 weeks. This caused my tank to crash. Followed by uncontrollable cynos everywhere. I lost about quarter of my acros and everything else looked like crap.
At the time I couldn't figure it out. It appears now that the spike in my temperature (north of 86 degrees) likely caused the problems. Higher temperature less O2 at night the largest fish by far was the first to go.
Now that I have brought my temperature down to 78 degrees everything is looking way better, my corals are colouring up and growing like nuts.
Just a side note I bought two Finnex temperature controllers (supposed to be accurate) to heat my tank and have replaced the other two older heaters. One of the Finnex's is set at 84 degrees and shuts off at 77.7 degrees and the smaller one is set at 80 degrees and shuts off at 78.1. You can't trust a single thermometer or even a heat controller. You need to have an accurate way of double/ triple checking the temperature.
I now test the temperature at least twice a day.
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