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Thread: How can I use EB832's to heat a 600 gallon tank?

  1. #1
    Regular Vistor
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    How can I use EB832's to heat a 600 gallon tank?

    I just started running a 600 gallon aquarium this week. I went to install the heaters, which tripped the bar and now I'm reading that the brand new EB832 can only handle a max of 7A per outlet. It's already going to take me 3 9A heaters to handle this tank. If I drop to a smaller heater, I'll need 6-8. Even then I can only run 1 per EB832 if I'm going to run anything else on it. So I need to buy 8 energy bars?

    What's the thought process behind this? That people with large tanks shouldn't use the Apex? Or at least not to heat the tank?

    Any suggestions from anyone for how I could work this?

  2. #2
    Regular Vistor
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    I have an 800G tank. I run 3x 300W heaters, and they heat the tank just fine. I could see maybe upgrading to 500's in the future just so they run a little shorter duration, but they easily heat the tank (with only 2 on at any one time). I feel like you have too much power, or have your tank outdoors in Finland.

  3. #3
    Regular Vistor
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    Definitely Finland. 😉

    These 800W are rated 140-265 gallons, so we got 3 to be safe, expecting to run 2 most of the time and the third as redundancy in case of failure of one.

    If you don't mind me asking:
    What temp do you keep your house?
    What about your tank?
    Do you think your equipment is generating a significant part of the heat?

  4. #4
    Frequent Contributor SuncrestReef's Avatar
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    You could look for a 24v relay switch that turns on or off a 120v outlet plugged into a normal power strip. The Apex could still control the heater by turning on or off the 24v accessory port of your EB832, or any module with a 24v accessory port, but the heater itself would be powered by the controlled outlet plugged into a power strip or wall outlet.

  5. #5
    Frequent Contributor zombie's Avatar
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    Your heaters are way bigger than they need to be. You only need 1500W total to heat the tank from 70F to 80F within 8 hours and 400W continuous to stay in equilibrium and that assumes that no heat is added to the tank from other sources like pumps and lights (obviously not the case).

    You can easily get by with (3) 500W heaters and two of the 3 can be plugged into your lightest loaded energy bar and the 3rd can be plugged into a more heavily loaded one. Depending on what other kinds of loads you have, you might need a 3rd energy bar, but your house circuits will play a limiting factor too. Each circuit to your tank can at most provide 20A, so 3 energy bars loaded pretty heavily may require 3 separate breakers to feed everything.

    Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

  6. #6
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    I keep my house around 74-76 ish... Right now I'm keeping the tank at about 77, I have it on the seasonal time. Right now I have no lights on the tank, they are being repaired, so there is absolutely no heat input other than a pair of COR-20's.

    Heaters are far over-rated for tank size. It's the same with alot of things, like skimmers. The manufacturers state you need one the size of a small moon to run a 300G tank. The below graph shows me heating the tank up with just 2 of the 300w heaters. Once it got back up to temp, it has been rock solid. Typical runtime for a heater is a single heater on for 40 minutes, with the last 10 or so minutes with a second heater kicking in. The third one never turns on.

    I've run this same config on this tank a few years ago, and it was more than sufficient for years. I would go with 3x 500w for yours. Definitely no more than that.

    Screenshot-2018-11-25 APEX Local.png

  7. #7
    Regular Vistor
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    Thank you all. Every response was helpful. I feel like I have several options now. The best is probably to return the heaters and go with smaller ones from the start.

    Thanks again

  8. #8
    NSI Member
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    Just to drive home the idea, I keep my house at 72 in the summer and right now it stays at mid 60's, I use two 250W (Total 500w) heaters on 400 gallons of water and it maintains 78 degree no problem.

  9. #9
    Frequent Visitor
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    If you go with smaller heaters
    .. A good idea!!! , going to be important that any water changes use heated RO/DI water. The time to reheat a 1 to 2 degree will be much longer.

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