🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov20.165753.7695@medtron.medtronic.com> ds0007@medtronic.COM (Dale Skiba) writes:
>Adam Bracewell (sya@ecmwf.co.uk) wrote:
>: Just been reading the FAQ for these groups and something struck me as odd.
>: In the section titled Starting a new Aquarium, the heater wattage recommended (as a rule
>: of thumb) is 2.5 watts per gallon.
>: My question - is this really enough ? I've recently seen 8 watts/gal recommended.
>
>Well, I think something is missing there.  The formula should contain
>the DIFFERENCE in temperatures between the water and room temperature.

Mmm.  Haven't looked at the FAQ for awhile.  For general interest,
VisiTherm heaters come with a little chart for determining wattage
based on number of gallons and the required temperature pull-up.
I'd type it in right now, but it's at the very bottom of my stack
of fish-stuff boxes :-).  If there's demand, I'll dig it up.  Might
be nice to add to the FAQ.

And yeah, you can go on all night on modifications to such a
chart, but barring obvious deviations (such as my open topped
tank with a fan and metal halide lighting), I've found that that
those two parameters (gallons and delta(T)) seem to work ok.

I'll second (third?) the caveat about getting too powerful
a heater:  a friend of mine recently converted his African
tank to bouillabaisse that way :-(  (when his heater jammed on).
Some of the better, more modern heaters claim to be solid state
so that this is a less likely occurrence, but there's little
point in taking the chance.  

-- 

James Harold                 "There is always an easy solution to
harold@wam.umd.edu            every human problem -- neat, plausible,
                              and wrong."    --  H. L. Mencken