Battery Operated Heaters?

[RobberyinCSharp]

Is there a such thing as a battery-operated aquarium heater? And if so, where would I get one?

 

[StandbySetting]

I've never seen one, what if it were to run out of batteries?

 

[soybean]

Are you running out of sockets?

 

[bae1994]

Lol I'm guessing it's for transport / power cuts

If for the car get a 12 v to plug converter and get a battery back up plug for the house for power cuts as I don't think they sell battery ones

 

[RobberyinCSharp]

Are you running out of sockets?

Actually, yes! hahahah!

 

[Geoff-]

The problem for heaters is they need a lot of energy (relatively speaking) to heat a tank. My aquarium pump is about 8 watts. My heater is 100 watts. Even at 50% duty that is a lot more power being used.

Take for example a 6V lantern battery (the big square ones). They have a capacity of 11Ah @ 6V, or 66 Watt-hours. A 100W heater at 50% duty cycle would only last 1.3 hours on this battery IF (and it's a big IF) you managed to suck all the energy out of the battery with 100% efficiency.

A (BIG!) car battery might be 200Ah, for this kind of usage you would need a deep cycle battery if you wanted it to last. Even still they are only designed to be discharged to 50% if you want a decent life, which means your usable capacity is 100Ah @ 12V, 1200W/h. This would happily power your heater for 24 hours, and you would then need to charge it which would take a few hours every day if you wanted to be kind to the cells.

so yeah, don't bother

 

[nurglespuss]

Yes a good question...

I'm due to hit a spot of serious bother, the electricity in my house needs to go off for 2 days in October (i.e. when its cold) I'm currently running two nano-tanks (one tropical one temporate)...

I 'think' they will be OK, though i'm worried about the filters/lack of flow (I also won't be there when it happens)...

I have a much larger (i.e. more stable) tank to move both tanks into, but am still yet to locate a stand strong enough for it!

Aaaargh!

 

[Mowbz]

A (BIG!) car battery might be 200Ah, for this kind of usage you would need a deep cycle battery if you wanted it to last. Even still they are only designed to be discharged to 50% if you want a decent life, which means your usable capacity is 100Ah @ 12V, 1200W/h. This would happily power your heater for 24 hours, and you would then need to charge it which would take a few hours every day if you wanted to be kind to the cells.

so yeah, don't bother

Definately dont bother using a car battery, in any capacity. They are designed to give off a huge amountof power very quickly, then revert to taking in current from the alternator of your car. Once the engine is running, your battery does nothing, the alternator runs the car and charges what was lost at start-up.

The reason i say definately DONT bother, is because they might only provide 12v (If your lucky, i test about 30 batteries a week, and they are rarely much above 10-11v) but they do this at whats know as "CCA" or "Cold Cranking Amps". They can indeed provide a constant Ah value, but they are also designed to throw out any where between 400-1200 "Cold Cranking Amps" at startup, and ive seen plenty of things in the workshop explode because they were being used to run something other than a car.....

Good idea in principle however....

EDIT: If you really want something like this, use an Optima yellow-top deep cycle battery. They're designed to be used in big audio instals, and provide a much better long term flow of current....

 

[rdub]

Is anyone still watching this thread?

I just need to transport some fish in the car for about 6 hours. What would you recommend?

 

[nurglespuss]

Insulation (polystyrene box inside picnick hamper box is good, keep your car heating on if you can).

You can also buy heat packs too.

 

[rdub]

Thanks. Any idea who would sell the heat packs? Are they used for fish or is the normal use something else?

 

[nurglespuss]

Thanks. Any idea who would sell the heat packs? Are they used for fish or is the normal use something else?

No probs, there may well be cheaper ones, but here's one website:

Heat packs

 

[Mikaila31]

fleetfarm sells heat packs, but for a 6 hours drive I wouldn't even bother.

 

[Cazgar]

eBay or Amazon would probably have heat packs, there are lots of different kinds, some you can heat in the microwave & in an insulated box would probably last long enough