Broken heater -> Tank Crash in Progress

[Midway]

I had a heater it went hay wired on me once too. It took a few corals out but the system recovered pretty good. I'm with Kien on this one, Have the heaters controlled by controllers...priceless big piece of mind. If heater gets stuck, controller shut it off at the temp you set yourself when setup heater on the controller. If the heater/s for some odd reason fail to turn on, there's go an email to your email account saying the low temp you set up yourself too has been reached so you can react right away. I know controllers are not cheap but they paid them selves big time saving you money and big time head aches in the future.

[mike31154]

Trouble with a controller is, sure it will prevent a stuck heater from cooking your tank, but it won't stop a heater from bursting or exploding. Nor will it keep your tank from getting too cold if a heater doesn't work. It's another level of protection for sure, but also another point of failure itself. No absolute guarantees no matter what you do. You can decrease the odds of something ruining your day by adding levels of protection, but there's a point where redundancy also becomes complexity. Daily personal monitoring is the only way to really be sure. If you're away a lot, your odds increase of something going wrong no matter how many backups you have. Even an email from your controller that something's up while you're on the beach in Mexico enjoying a Cerveza is not going to do that much to prevent at least some chaos until you either return or have someone fix it pronto.

Kien makes the point by saying he has no idea a heater is working or not unless he unplugs it from his controller & hooks it up independently to see whether or not it's working as it should. One of the reasons I went back to at least one glass heater is because I can see the pilot light turn on/off as the heater thermostat is doing its thing.

[BC564]

I use more then one heater at a smaller wattage.... and not glass type.....if one sticks on...it doesnt hurt anything and the other one doesnt kick in.... for more then one to fail together would be amazing....

[Spyd]

I agree. I use 3 x 250w Jagr heaters in my 180G setup. All are plugged into a controller. That way, if one gets stuck on, the controller turns it off. If one ends up crapping out, there are 2 others to back it up.

That's about as good as you can get with back-ups to ensure heater issues. Saying that, I have heard of heaters cracking and exploding so going to a Hydor inline or Titanium heater may be the way to go.

I recently had my water change heater leaking electricity into my main display water. It tingled my hands when I touched my sump and was turning one thing off at a time to try and see what the issue was. By the end, I had everything off on my main display and nothing... Finally, I decided to touch the water in my water change tank and got zapped! The water in the water change tank was separate from the display at this point. Turns out the heater in my water change tank was plugged into a power bar and the electricity must have been flowing down from there into my other equipment. It was an old crappy heater and luckily I caught it very early so no damage was done to my tank.

[Midway]

Well obviously a controller is not gonna stop a heater from exploding or cracking or anything like that. A controller its a really good backup if a heater gets stuck or a heater fails to turn on or stuff, of course the controller will prevent the tank from getting cold if you set it up to send you an email if the temp is falling from what you set it up at. The controller will NOT stop the tank from getting cold, you will prevent it by getting an early warning by the same controller.
I'm not saying that the controller will replace checking your equipment yourself once in a while, making sure everything is working as it should. The controller is a really good level of automation from preventing disaster from happening to a point IMHO.