External heater to 90 litres.

[Jake101]

Hi,

I would like to find a decent option for a submerged heater. My next tank will be 90 litres and I would like to get rid of in-tank gadgetry as much as possible.

I know Hydor manufactures external heaters, but the smallest model is 200 W. During my years in the hobby I have had 2 thermostat malfunctions. It has been just bad luck, but 200 W can heat up 90 litres pretty fast if malfunctioning, so I would prefer a more moderate wattage. Any suggestions?

 

[stu_]

Pretty sure Hydor are the only external heaters.
Back up plan here if you want one ?

 

[Jake101]

Thanks, Stu. Back up looks a good way to go.

 

[Rahms]

Pretty sure Hydor are the only external heaters.
Back up plan here if you want one ?

If I had the money that's what I'd do!

 

[tmiravent]

Hi, i have a smaller tank (30 liters) and that was an issue also...

The heater is just too BIG!! There is no 'commercial' option. The hydor are just too expensive and too powerful, i think...
So i made one!

I used a cheap 100W Chinese stainless steel heater. Is not very accurate, with come patience you can figure the error in temperature scale.
The eheim heaters are not an option, too big, too safe, very few heating power! (i love eheim but their heaters are not my favorite, sorry).
With time all heaters will fail, so i'm prepared to change the stainless steel heater in 1 or 2 years.
The pipes and adapters are very cheap and easy to glue.
The heater is in the vertical position, tryed in horizontal but a heat point in the middle was forming...
Vertical way works perfectly, doesn't heat a bit (in outside pipe).
It reduces flow as anything you put in line...
I'm so happy with this that i'm thinking about changing all my heaters to this.
Hope it helps,
cheers

 

[zozo]

I think i know a pretty decent relaiable option, i already ordered the materials and waiting for them to arive.

And i'll go for a food grade 12v 80watt emersion cartridge heater with an external electronic thermostat. (also availablle in 100 watt about the same price) so for small tanks more than anough.

With this it's fairly simple to fit in a tube construction with a 16mm hole and a M16 nut, as you see it has a O-ring seal. No need to smear kit.

The thermostat has a 10 amp relay and is programmable, with a min and max temp and can give an alarm if settings are not met.

This together will cost about $ 34 or less, then still need a 12 volt 10 amp power supply and some tubing material. All by all depending on your inventiveness if it gets much more expensive that a hydor. But this is more customizable to you needs..

I realy do not see an issue with warrenty nor quality, f.e. the hydor or eheim heaters hence they are made in china as well. Made in Germany is history and a joke. Like made in Holland by Phillips is a laugh as well, there is no more Phillips factory in Holland. And if yo unscrew the case you'll find china components. Even with top noch brands and they can have a bad batch also and you can have bad luck and it can malfunction at one time, i did read that enough about Hydor. They also use the same type emersion heaters only with a tiny build in and useauly inrelaible thermostat and are 110 or 220 volts.

The thermostat! Their you have to be a bit carefull so the temp probe will never leave the tank. Kit it in the corner of the tank with a tiny dot of silicon kit. It's not the heater that will cause any dangerous problems more like the thermostat will do that. If the probe falls out you'll get delicious fish soup end of the day.. But there are other ways to use a little watertight IP68 Gland to also fix the probe in the tubing.

When the stuff arives i'll make the tubing with hose conectors (no kit involved only glew (cement) and report a small DIY topic here.. It's quite simple actualy.

 

[zozo]

Today i recieved the eletrical components for the DIY In line heater. I got about 43 liter to heat.. So i went for a 80 watt immersion cartridge heater, mine is 12 volts.
I did a first real live test to see if it can do the job before i put it in line and for so far it does a very good job.

This is the initial test setup, maybe looks rater strange and dangerous to you, but i know what im doing, no animals are hurt during the process. It's safe and have a kill switch at hand, but 12 volt wont do anything bad anyway, it's more not to damage the components..

It does an even better job then the big clumsy iron bar in the back which is 100 watt 220v with a lousy loud clicking bimetalic thermostat which is alway 3 to 4 degrees off and the tank temp fluctuates like hell and takes at least the same amount of time to heat all up to the right temp. To be honest that thing was 10 bucks, so what to expect of that, it gets warm thats it..

Its this tiny stainless steel thingy, 4 inches long and ½ inch diameter 12 volt 80 watt. (€25,36, depending on the Dollar this can differ daily)

(They come in various sizes, flavours and power ranges, also in 110v and 220v different wattages, but the higher the more expensive they become)

Im running it whit this little programmable and astonishing acurate thermostat, with a 10 amp relay it can switch up to 220 volts up to 120 watts for more you need an additional more powerfull relay. (€3,67)

It is programmable with the following settings

It can be set with
P1 how far down must it cool to start heating again
P2 to never ever go higher than the set temp in my case 26 C
P3 is not needed this is only if used for cooling.
P4 is calibration with other thermometer in the tank
P5 rather 0 in our case
P6 gives --- on the display and says hotter than P2 for what ever reason. (There are few bucks more expensive ones with a buzzer as well)

Set button is desired temp set, it will always heat 1c more to switch off, so 24,5c set 25,5 is off, if you set P1 to 0.1c the water will always stay within less then 0.5c range

I did put a temp probe to the heater, but this is not the correct one to measure it properly, because it's also affected by the cooling water around it and doesnt give a proper reading.
This tiny thingy burned my finger, so it gets much hotter than that. I guess around 80c

I started the test with 24,4c and set it to 25c and it took less then an hour to reach the set temp.

Now, for me the test is succesfully accomplished, if i want it all quicker than i still could go fer the 120 watt version which is twice the size and around the same price. I guess i'll try that one next.
But first since the test is OK i have to build me the in line tubing this week for this one.. I think it will perform even better in a smaller somewhat confined space like in the tube than in the tank like this.

So stay in the tube, will be continued, next week.

 

[Jake101]

Interesting test and setup. Sounds like viable option to build on, so keep it coming

 

[zozo]

It's the ZoZo inline Nano Heater - Model Stunner 801

This was the first presure test.. (passed)


What do you need?

PVC Glew and 32mm

Needed to cut the top joint a bit off to sink the heater in place.

A socket a 45 degree knee and (what's it called?)

http://onlinemerce.imageserve.nl/biermansonline/120x120/8712148000003_8712148001178.jpg

Anyway, final idea.

But this was the tricky part, glew the stainless steel nut from the heater and put it tight in the cut of top section.

Could have got a plastic nut, but didn't realy trusted the strenght of it. So i still had some aquarium save epoxy. Filled it up with that, and it works OK. That will never fall out again

Mean while it was curing, i got a little carried away whit tube cuttings.. After all it's plastic.

Ready to assamble

And now it's time to get the temperature probe inline.. First i thought of a tiny IP68 gland. And because they are tiny, they are not quite standard for sale everywhere. Expensive and can only be used on round cable. And the probe cable is a twin cable and flat with a groove in the midlle. So had to come up with an working alternative. Used a Co2 - 4/6mm x M5 hose connector. If you are very carefull and precise, you can drill the hole up till 3mm. That was needed to get the cable in without cutting of the connectors.

in an earlier reply i said, no smearing with kit needed, well i lied. Couldn't get around that with the groovy twin cable. I needed kit to get a water tight connection with the co2 hose connector.
But still i avoided smearing.. Kit is actualy rather funny stuff, it's Silica desolved in a carbon based solvent. So you can make it thinner with any carbon based solvent you like.
You can do it with turpentine, white spirit or paint thinner. Since paint thinner is not so suitable for the electrical insulation i went for white spirit. Because thats also more volatile than turpentine and will cure quicker.

All you need is a tiny dot of silicon kit and a few drops of spirit and a cyrigne. Drip the spirit on the kit with the syringe and use a tooth pick to mix it till you got a hot tar like substance.
Empty the syrigne whit spirit and suck the thin kit into it. Take a small piece of 4/6mm silicone tubing and put that on the hose connector. Put the needle in (take a needle big enough i used a needle no 6) and gently push in the kit, till it comes out the other end. Do this from both sides..

Drill a 4,2mm hole, tape some M5 thread and put trough the probe, screw the connector on and wait for it to cure. About a 6 hours, depending on how thin you made the kit.

Here it is again

It doens't have an in nor an out yet, that's still to be tested, i drilled 2 holes so i can move the probe for more acurate readings if necesary, plugged one hole of with a small stainles steel screw.

Now it is time for testing a bit took a bucket of 20 liter water, and a 1400 l/h pump. Regulated the pump a bit with narowing the hose. 1400 l/h is a bit much for nano setups. But i do not know how strong the flow trough finaly was.

I started with cold tap water 16.8 c and set the goal temperatuur on 23,5 c

2 hours later it had done a perfect job.. Earlier i said it always warms the water 1 c more than set.. But that was a false reading.. It warms the water till the set "return differnce" which i did set on 0.3c. This means 23,5c set, it will warm till 23,8c and shuts off. It will cool down to 23,2c and will start warming again til 23,8c

So i guess 2 hours for heating 20 liters of pretty cold water up to 8 degrees with an unknown but quite strong flow. Is a safe and pretty good job for such a tiny 80watt 12 volt cartridge heater.
Actauly it out performs my 100 watt tank heater by a lot!!

Overall costs, about a € 45... Overall i find this a succes!! Still have to waight a few days before i can use it for my aquarium. I need to let the epoxy cure for at least 10 days for it to be aquarium save.

Cheers..

 

[zozo]

Here it is attached to the pump..

The thermostat temp probe is placed to measure the water comming from the tank, so it has to pass the filter first. It cools down 0.2 degrees to reach the temp probe.. So the tank is always 0.2 degrees warmer then the thermostat reads..