I’m currently still cycling my tank before I put any fish, I plan to still add more decorations but I’ve been treating my water with prime and stability for the last couple of days and will continue to do so until my water is cycled. My water became cloudy, but when I tested my water, I still didn’t have any nitrates or nitrates or ammonia.
I have my heater set to 89° but the water is only getting up to 70°
Am I on the right track? Any advice? Is greatly appreciated.
Posted by Forbeslist500
18 Comments
Every heater have option for desired temp. Select it and give it time. Add some plants they are very important for cycling and ghost feed every few days a bit to start the bacterial colony . It’s look good keep it up you got this 🙂
I can’t fully tell from the picture, but that heater appears to be adjustable? Is it set higher than 70? If not, thats your issue.
If its NOT an adjustable heater, I highly recommend getting one. 🙂
Edit –
one other thing to consider here:
Even if that heater is rated for 130 gallons, those ratings are… let’s call them optimistic. In a 110g, especially if the room is a bit cool, a single heater like that can struggle to keep up.
If it’s already turned up and still stuck around 70°, there’s a good chance it’s either underpowered in practice or starting to fail. Which, is pretty common with these style heaters.
A quick test is to turn it all the way up and give it a couple hours. If the temp barely moves, it’s not keeping up.
Most folks with tanks that size end up running two heaters (like 2x 300W) instead of relying on one. More stable, and you’ve got a backup if one starts acting up.
You might also try going for a 500-600W heater if thats cheaper, but you’ll need some decent flow to circulate the water in a tank that size.
Those heater ratings are more like suggestions. You probably need a second heater.
For your cycle, add some ammonia to the tank. Waiting for it to show up is going to take forever. You can use cleaning ammonia as long as it doesn’t have anything else in it or aquarium ammonia.
Check your thermometer against a another one. Rule that out.
You need more circulation.
Lets trade out for my 29 gallon lol
It’s likely too much to deal with. If you’re in the San Antonio area, I’ll swing by and take it off your hands for you.
Also, you may want a bit more substrate if you end up wanting live plants. You’re going to want live plants.
Get a proper lid/canopy, lights and possibly another heater.
those are litres. not gallons.
Move your heater down some and have it horizontal! That’ll help spread the heat! If you have a wave maker, kinda pointed towards the heater or that area!!
It’s best to run two heaters anyways on a big tank imo
In case one fails or just can’t keep up
What’s the temperature of the room that the tank is kept in?
I never liked those heaters I had one break and nearly cook all my fish
Is the hob in first pic the only filter you have? If so maybe try hanging the heater closer to the intake of it and see if that helps any, sometimes it’ll give a boost having constant flow across it
Two things.
1) you should always double the heater rating for your tank size. So get a heater rated for 300g or two 150’s for a tank that size.
2) place the heater directly in the line of the water flow so as water moves out it warms immediately. OR place it directly at intake so it warms as it moves through filtration.
As an aside unless you have a big canister filter underneath the tank. That HOB is not enough filtration for that tank.
Treating your water with prime is holding back your nitrogen cycle. The chemicals in Prime form bonds with ammonia/nitrites/nitrates making is basically unavailable and safe for fish. It will also throw your test results off. Stop treating with Prime and use a basic dechlorinator. Don’t get me wrong, Prime saved my entire tank in the past month but it’s not what you need at this point.
Without the flow of water by the heater you create pockets, you’ll need to add a wave maker or something, also if your aquarium is truly 110g I imagine you will need additional filtration.
70 is room temperature…
Bigger heater or a second one.
Also, people forget about evaporative cooling. Putting a tight-fitting glass lid on can help not only with heat retention, but water evaporation, especially if the room is air conditioned.
For cycling, you can ghost feed, just add food and let it rot. I’ve also seen people do a sacrifice, adding a couple feeder fish and just letting them die and rot, but I don’t generally recommend that. It’s mean to the fish and you still may not get a complete cycle.
Bottled bacteria like Microbe Lift are great, but they cycle fast. Be ready to add fish as soon as the cycle is done, or the bacteria starve to death and you’re back at square one.
So I ran into this with my 75 gallon tank. I was using a heater well rated for the size of the tank and I couldn’t get the water temperature above 74F when it was set to 78F. My house is pretty chilly when I’m not home so I built a lid for the tank, thinking a lot of my heat was leaving the top of the tank and the heater couldn’t catch up.
Well the tank lid helped a little bit but not a lot. I was convinced that I needed another heater, so when I was in my LFS where I bought the heater from, I mentioned it to them. The employee looked up the heater I bought and said that it should be more than enough for the tank size. (I think it was a eheim 200w).
They mentioned what is probably happening is that I don’t have enough water flowing past the heater and the heater warms the stagnant water up around itself and then sees the internal thermometer reading 78F and shuts off. Their suggestion was to increase water flow or to increase the temperature of the heater, which would cause the water right around the heater to be warmer, but would dissipate into the rest of the water better.
Because I didn’t want a lot of water flow in my tank (slow moving river biotope) I opted instead to get an inkbird temperature controller. Which you can look up yourself but it uses a separate thermometer placed somewhere else in your tank to control the heater. Ever since installing that I haven’t had any issues with maintaining my set point.
Looking at your tank, I suspect you’re dealing with a similar issue because with a hang-on-back filter, you’re likely not getting much flow in your tank. I would either add a power head to move the water around more, or I would suggest what I did and buy an inkbird and set it up. Like others said, there could be something wrong with the heater, you could try placing it in a smaller bucket of water and taking a temperature reading from that. It should have no probably heating up a 5 gallon bucket to 89F. If you’re still only getting 70F then it’s the heater.
Good luck!