Does anyone have any experience with Hydor In-Line Heaters? I would like to use one with my canister filters but don't really know anything about their reliability, accuracy etc.

Linda

I use to have a hydor eth 200, it worked great for two year's than stopped working. :evil:

It came with a 3year warranty, so my LFS gave me a new one (that i have not used yet :lol: )

I used a 300 watt one for quite a while, all good, but apparently they where taken off the market because of an overheating problem.

Not sure if you can still get 300watt ones.

Thanks. The 300 watt one is still available, so I assume they have corrected that problem. Do you think the 300 watt one could manage a 100 gal. salt tank? I figure between the substrate and the plant decorations and rocks, there is probably only 80 gallons of water in there. The 300 watt one says it can handle tanks up to 80 gallons. What do you think?

Linda

Well you could give it a go, just have a check every now and then make sure the temp is ok, does it get very cold there in winter?

I like to have a bit more than is needed, and if i had a bigger tank i would run two, just incase one fails.

Especially if you are going to have nice corals and so on

Heat loss is a function of tank area and ambient temperature

If you reduce the tank area exposed to the cold room, you will decrese the power needed. I have a 300 litre tank and have had to put 700 watts of heat in it because its long, tall and thin, and the room is bloody freezing, still sinks to 23° overnight when the room gets to 7° but I figure its cheaper to heat the tank then the whole house like I did last year, since we are not really using the lounge as much.

The Hydor heaters had serious issues with them. I am surprised if shops are still trying to sell stock of them. I know of a fully planted discus tank which got cooked by one of these.

The problem is when it fails it over heats, so unless you are there watching your thermometer the whole time it's unlikely you will catch it. Not worth the risk.