Do you use a heater with your Cichlids?

[Tiapan]

Re: Do you use a heater with your Cichlids?

i dont have as many tanks as some people on here but the temp in my house is never stable people always mess with it and so the house fluxuates a lot. so i use heaters as a fallback and safety feature. of course if they ever break nad keep heating you can come home to well done fish. i have heard of it before (they dont really cook just died from to hot water)

[jtfields]

Re: Do you use a heater with your Cichlids?

i dont have as many tanks as some people on here but the temp in my house is never stable people always mess with it and so the house fluxuates a lot. so i use heaters as a fallback and safety feature. of course if they ever break nad keep heating you can come home to well done fish. i have heard of it before (they dont really cook just died from to hot water)

If you have a large enough aquarium the temperature should not fluctuate quickly even if the temp in your home does.  I too have heard all too often of heaters breaking and getting stuck in the on position.  That's another reason why in addition to the plumbing hassles of an inline that I wanted to avoid one.  I may start out without one and carefully monitor my temps and then add one later if I feel it's necessary.

I'm seriously considering an inline UV sterilizer.  Haven't decided for sure.  But I've heard those raise you tank temps a couple of degrees as well.  So if I go with one then maybe that lessens the need for a heater even further.  As with the heater, the plumbing issues of an inline sterilizer are making me undecided though.  That's just one more thing to leak.  My instincts say "keep it simple."

[Tiapan]

Re: Do you use a heater with your Cichlids?

the pond ones are pretty simple(uv sterilizer), and yeah i dont have really big tanks (none near the 100 mark yet) and Tim's tanks do very well. so thats a good sign. but UV's are usually used for salt water or ponds for alge control and parasites since most salt fish are wild caught. and most treatments for parasites have copper so they kill corals. i dont know anyone that has one on a fresh tank when you can treat so easily.

[PAPERGUY]

Re: Do you use a heater with your Cichlids?

Hello! I have always used a heater to insure a consistant temp. They have a thermostat so it will only come on if the temp falls below the temp it's set at. I use a uv steralizer on my 90gal freshwater, I guess in the hopes it helps to keep the water healthier so I dont have to treat it for anything.

[RonR.]

Re: Do you use a heater with your Cichlids?

yes, i have 2 500w titanium heaters on my 180g.  they are stand-alone heaters.........with no thermostat on them.  I bought them on-line at jehmco and have the ones with the longer cord because I run them all the way to the bottom of my tank.  they lay on the bottom behind my holey rock walls.

I plug both of them into a ranco single stage controller i bought off ebay.  I am not an electrical guy, but I had to wire the controller myself.  I found a diagram on a home beer brewer's website.  the saltwater guys use single and dual stage controllers to run fans, chillers, lights based on the tank's temp.  the controller has a temp probe on it.  I attach my 2 heaters into the controller and this unit is pretty accurate.  I set my moba front tank between 77 and 79 degrees.

I worry about a heater sticking and boiling my fish so I opted to go this route for heating.  total cost for heaters was around $70-$80 and the ranco was around $70.  I bought a heavy duty extension cord to wire up the ranco to be sure it could handle both 500w heaters.

i've run this set-up for over 2 years now with no problems.

the only other heater i've used with good results have been ebos.

[geoff_tropheus]

Re: Do you use a heater with your Cichlids?

If you have your tanks in a air conditioned home/office or even garage that has heat and AC then I think no heater is needed.  I have run my tanks as low as 74 with no effect on the fish.  But....I did watch them closely and was worried if the temp stayed to low for too long.

I lost more fish over the years to failed heaters cooking them, than I lost to illness or freakish accident.

I now only run heaters in January on all my tanks.  On any of my hospital tanks or small tanks like 29 gallons and less, I run heaters most months of the year.