can't win em all i guess?! lol



thanks WD, look forward to seeing what you have to say


Thanks Dave, interesting stuff i'll have a read and think and adjust the bit on lighting.....

Just wanted to say thankyou everyone for your contributions and comments, these things are much better when we all work together on them

ok tweaked and tinkered a bit this evening..... let me know what you think

i'd still like some more info on other heaters and their merits and drawbacks.....

Well, of course heaters come in some different types and one of the advantages of an external-inline heater that is spliced into the pump return hose is that you can just leave it running while doing a large water change (ie. any water change that doesn't break your siphon, you can just leave the filter and heater both running.) With a tube heater, unless you have it positioned very low in the tank.. enough to trust that it won't hurt itself, you really should unplug it for the water change. Its just one more thing that might be accidently forgotten either prior to or after the water change, both of which can be important.

(I can hear the writer's sigh... "oh dear, says Miss Poppins, it really mustn't be a book, it really musn't, but where will I put all this, O dear...")

~~WD~~

I'll give you a short-ish run-down on heaters then;

Electronic types

These use electronics to sence the temperature of the tank. These electronics use a relay to switch power to the heating coil on and off. A relay does not use a magnet to make a firm contact, and thus has an equal chance of failing on or off. The electronics, namely the thermistor doing the sencing, or the ariable resistor and transistor, will be the next least reliable components in the system. These will suddenly break, and stop all current flow throgh the sencing circut. Without the power, the relay cannot be in the on position, hence why an electronic heater will fail off, rather than on... After that, the heater coil will be the only thing left to fail. Obviously, these can only fail off. The glass is as reliable as on by-metallic strip type heaters.

The electronics are more accurate to start, and maintain their accuracy right untill the end of the heaters life

By-metallic strips

These use two metal plates welded together, that flexes with temperature change. A magnet is used to secure a good contact in the on position, otherwise the magnetic field induced arround the strip would force the strip back again everytime it made contact with the coil's contact (I know, not the clearest description ) This means that the most likely to fail component will fail on, due to the magnet attracting the strip to the on contact the strip also wears out, making the heater hold a less stable temperature before failing.

External heaters

These are basically an external version of the electronic heaters, assuming Hydor are the only company producing in-lines... I think they hold a patent on the idea, and if this is the case they are likely to be the only company to produce them for the next 30 years.....Unless the lease out the right to make competing products, which I think will be unlikely.....

HTH
Rabbut

PS. Sorry, I haven't re-read your first post after your ttweaking, bu I'm not feeling up-to it at this time of night. I'll get back to you in the morning on that one

very good MW!

so true, it's what we were saying on the other thread isn't it. there is just so much stuff you should tell beginners when they're starting out, there's so much to absorb and learn, but if you put it all in one place it's simply too much to read.


i'll try and work something more in on heaters later.

This post has been edited by Miss Wiggle: Jun 27 2008, 07:01 AM

I'd say the level of info (on this thread specifically, and the forum in general) is fine.

When it comes to fishkeeping, especially from a newbie perspective, there are just far too many variables out there to be able to catch every single issue that might occur. If you try, you just end up with information overload, which will just confuse people, or outright scare them away.

The pinned threads at the top of this board will catch any serious problems for maybe 99.5% of people, unfortunately there will always be that 0.5% that have an issue nobody thought about. That means if someone comes on here and follows the advice given before buying a tank, then they have a 99.5% chance of getting it right. That's pretty good odds.

The problem is getting these people to come here and follow the advice at the right time - from my short time here, it seems that most of the threads from newbies here are along the lines of "I ran my tank for a week like the shop said, and now my fish are all dying". In those cases, we just have to help the best we can.

It'd be nice to get the word out there before people get to this stage, but short of a national advertising campaign, there's not much we can do about that. We just have to wait for them to come to us, and do the best we can from there.

The thing to remember, is that this is a live, active forum with plenty of people giving good advice at all hours of the day. It's not a static website or a book, so if people have any questions, all they need to do is ask.

Generally, I've been well impressed by the level of info available in the pinned topics - you've all done a great job.

yeah absolutley, and we have a couple of pins specifically for that situation as it's what we come across the most, unfortunatley large scale change like thta is a gradual thing however it is coming on, there are now at least some shops which will advocate fishless cycling..... before there were none at all. gradually over time views will change. But there's not a lot more we can do to get the message out.

Thanks for this, rearly helped

hiya mate just a question iv got a tropical tank with some silver sharks,2parrots,a silver barb,2silver dollors,a rd tailed shark ,a cat fish and a blue lobster just wanted to know if you could put cichlids in the same tank with these or would i have to set up another tank to put cichilds in people have told me different things that i can put cichlids in and some people said i cant so just need some advice

cichlids is (i think) the largest family of fish, theres literally thousands of different species each with their own care requirements. So it's fairly likely that you will be able to keep some sort of cichlid but it depends on a lot of different factors such as tank size, water parameters etc. If you start up a thread in the new world chiclids forum with as much info about your tank as you can they will be able to help you determine if there is anything suitable.