Hello, I have just upgraded my 93 gallon to a 265 and added a 800 watt finnex heater. The entire system is running now but NOT connected to my apex yet; all running temporarily off of controllers and power strips. since my new heater is 9 amps, does this mean I cannot use it and do i need to run 2 separate smaller heaters? This is curious since there must be people using heaters of this size on larger systems. Any advice would help!
It's because you oversized your heater. Your break even heat transfer for your tank is 500W. That value is 500W for everything including heat transfer from lights, pumps, etc so only about 300W is actually needed to break even with a heater.
You want two 500W heater for redundancy but only one should be run at a time.
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Well...I have a 500 watt finnex which The mfg recommendation is only up to a 130 gallon system. I was actually worried that an 800 w was still going to be too small. I guess Ill just swap them out, and buy a second 500 for redundancy. Anyone want to buy a new 800 W Finnex...;-)..Kidding of course. have no idea what i will do with this thing now
You could stick it in a wall outlet or in a ranco and set it as an oh $h!t backup set at like 75 degrees in case the apex ever has a catastrophic failure.Originally Posted by katansam
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Seems that a lot use oversized heaters .... 2 watts per gallon is often the size needed.
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You also need to factor in the capabilities & limits of the EB832... 7 Amps per outlet, and the lesser of 15A or 1500 watts total for the entire EB832
Please do not send me PMs with technical questions or requesting assistance - use the forums for Apex help. PM me ONLY if the matter is of a private or personal nature. Thanks.
If you have an 84 by 27 by 27 ... you have a 265 gallon tank. I am assuming 10 mm glass and a room temperature of 63 F and a tank temperature of 78 F. Using this calculator the break even heater is 188 watts .. double it and you still need less than 1/2 the 800 watts.
http://www.kernsanalysis.com/HeaterCalculator.cgi
PS The initial heat up would be slow ... and you will have to preheat any water changes.
PPS Planning a similar tank for myself and will be using 2 300 Watt heaters each covering for 12 hours and backing up the other.
If you really want to run this heater and you have the home wiring that can handle it in addition to everything else, you could buy an EB4 and plug it into that. The EB4 has one 12A rated outlet available.
EB4 is your answer as rkpetersen already said.
Better way to approach it is to have a 500W & 300W heaters preferably plugged into separate circuits (EBs) with programming setup so that they come in stages.
The 300W heater would only come on if the 500W cannot keep up or fails.
I have a 200+ gallon setup currently and its being service by 3 heaters 300W + 200W + 200W (each programmed to come on .2 degrees lower then the last)
I believe this to be the best way I have done it to date.
Well...I already have the 500...so I think I will pick up a 300 a d put it on my second eb832....now, can both eb832s run off 1 outlet?..I'm doing it now and dont really have the option of another circuit, but could use two separate outlets. Just seems like a lot of juice
You can only if your total load is less than your circuit breaker rating on that circuit. Newer homes usually have 20A circuits so that gives you some room to play with over the EB rating of 15A.
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So here is the thing. Your house outlet is on a circuit of at least 15 amps, if the house is newer its 20, that allows you roughly (V * A)*85% so about 1530 or 2040 Watts respectively. The only thing we dont know is how many other outlets/appliances are plugged into other outlets on the same circuit chain - hopefully nothing much.
Here is what you can do: make a list of all devices that service your tank. Write down the wattage for each device, add them all up and divide by 120 - this will give you total amperage.
Here is one even better, setup the second EB 832, spread your heaters between them, also lights, etc. With EB 832 you can see actual load shown in both Amps and Watts. Flick all devices on your dashboard to ON position and see what the load it. Note it down and flick everything back to AUTO - dont forget to do that.
With that size tank you should really think about getting another dedicated circuit installed in the vicinity of your tank.
Hope this helps.
You actually want to divide by 100 not 120 to factor in the effect of power factor.
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Yes, one can or read it off EB832 for actual usage.
I got the same alert tonight. Weird. I’ve run this 800W heater on outlet 1 for over a year, confused why all of a sudden tonight after I added my PMK my system decided to freak with high amp alert
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