Hagen Marina C17

[JoshuaA]

I recently just had my heater go out on me, the red pilot light stays on continuously but doesn't warm the tank up what so ever. I emailed Hagen and admitted to not having a receipt or even the box any more but I did buy it 3 months ago, I got a response within an hour saying..."As a gesture of good will we will replace it free of charge if you mail it to this address" Amazed, truly was I was expecting maybe an offer for 10% of RRP.

Just the speed of them offering a free replacement kind of makes me think that this product may be well known for its faults, anyone else had this problem?

So now, even though it's getting replaced I'm a bit unsure whether to buy a back up heater, fortunately my room temperature is high enough to keep my Nano tank up at a reasonable temp. However I don't think my RCS are going to be impressed with me if I make it winter for too long for them. the tank is around 8L and although the C17 is rated for a much bigger tank it does a great job at keeping it secure. Are there any other heaters out there that will do just a good job for a back up replacement?

 

[OldMan47]

With a tiny 8 litre tank, almost any brand name heater in the 25W to 50W rating range will work great for you. I personally like the Marineland Stealth group of heaters but I doubt they are any better or worse than many other brands.

 

[JoshuaA]

I'm going to be sending off for the replacement and I think I'm just going to pick up a Elite 25/50w by Hagen as well, it's the same series my girlfriend has used for over a year now without a problem.

The design flaw in the tank though means the heater has go to into a back chamber on the tank, the filter however takes the water from the bottom of this chamber and then pushes it up through a mini hose and out the top through a nozzle. The basic laws of physics tells me heat rises and what ends up happening is there's a huge temperature difference from the tank and the chamber. However it always magically kept my tank at 26 even though that rear chamber "felt" much higher, Perhaps that was what caused the shortfall of the heater.

Lesson learnt... have various wattage heaters in reserve, fortunately I have just turned my 3KW room heater on bursts to keep the warm toasty for the shrimp. They don't seem affected at all, I "assume" 22C is within reasonable limits for RCS.

Edit: corrected basic spelling errors