Tank heaters

I spent an hour researching tank heaters of every type. It seemed all of them were ultimately reported to cause overheating to a critical point. I was looking into the titanium ones also being my bass broke last heater. These also were reported to sometimes overheat and kill fish. Is there some way to make almost absolute certainty a heater will never do this?
My second question is what is the safest type of one I can buy so I don't have to worry about any malfunctions.

These also were reported to sometimes overheat and kill fish. Is there some way to make almost absolute certainty a heater will never do this?

Unless your bass has some tropical tankmates that actually need one, the easiest way would be to not use a heater. I don't use a heater in any of my native fish tanks and they do fine. I think you'll find that many on the forum don't use heaters for their native fish. Keep in mind that in much of your fish's native range the water is quite cold right now.
If on the other hand your bass does have tropical tank mates, I guess you're stuck using a heater and I haven't got any good advice.

Considering how hungry are the bass under the ice right now, and how hard they fight when hooked, I can confidently predict it will never be too cold for your bass in your house.

I keep native mollies and also native tropical saltwater so I do HAVE to use heaters. Of course at the peak of my cichlid years I had a shtload of heaters sucking up juice around my house. Counting my Dad's tanks when I was a kid, I've had fish tank heaters running in my house the better part of 50 years. In all that time and many numerous tanks, I have only ever had ONE fail in service. That one stopped heating and I caught it by observing my sensitive butterflyfish hiding with clamped fins. Stuck my hand in the tank and felt the cold H2O. It happened to be a bargin brand but I will say I had others of the same brand which never failed. Check your tanks every day is the only way to know for sure any of your equipment is working.

I've been using VisiTherm brand for 20 years. I have had that brand installed non-stop for 10 years with no problem. May be relevent that I always over spec my heaters so they don't run non-stop in cold weather.
Now if I could just figure out a way to prevent myself from taking heaters out of the H2O while hot, I'd prolly never need to buy another.

I think this is mostly just one of those recurring bogeymen that haunt the tropical forums, like not using collected driftwood for fear of diseases and vinegar-testing rocks lest they provide pH buffering. I've heard a lot of cautions such as you describe, but I've only ever heard of one case of thermostat failure and it was a result of placing the heater under substrate rather than in the water column.

Of course at the peak of my cichlid years I had a shtload of heaters sucking up juice around my house.

Ditto! I used to wonder how much this was costing me when I had 1 10g, 2 20L, a 55g, a 125g, with keeping 82F in most of the tanks. That's one of the simple pleasures of natives - less worry.

For heaters, I always had good service from Ebo-Jager units - a little more money, but not much more. I also hear great things about the visi-therms and the external hydor in-line units.

I think when you're used to great ones, you can't fathom having issues with other units. I've had plenty of crappy heaters just stop working, but none stick in the "on" position.

Here's some reviews of common heaters over on the cichlid forum:

http://www.cichlid-f...y.php?CatID=701

I have been very happy with the Stealth heaters. We've been slowly switching over to using those because I do stupid things like pull the glass heaters out of the tank without unplugging them and then putting them back in the water hot. BANG goes the heater. This isn't a problem with the Stealths. I did recently have a friend that had a heater fail in the on position and souped his tank. Interesting, the only survivor was a zebra danio. I was betting on the betta.

Ditto! I used to wonder how much this was costing me when I had 1 10g, 2 20L, a 55g, a 125g, with keeping 82F in most of the tanks. That's one of the simple pleasures of natives - less worry.

A little OT, but if you're interested in actually knowing what any setup is costing you (and the environment), I've had really good luck with a kill-a-watt brand AC power meter. You plug it in inline and it gives you cumulative and average power usage over whatever time period you want. Especially good for something like a tank heater where you know the maximum power usage (100W, 200W, etc.), but not necessarily how much it's actually using over time as it cycles on and off.

I don't usually run heaters, but I was glad to find that the smallish air pumps, power heads, and HOB filters I've used consume very little power in the grand scheme of things.

Is there some way to make almost absolute certainty a heater will never do this?

Yes, run your heater/s through a controller.

I work within the aquatic industry, and also moderated on cichlid forum for a few yrs, & I've lost count as to how many heaters I have seen or read about failing in the ON position. Name a brand, and I can find several dozen hobbyists who have had that brand fail on them.

Every make of heater on the market has malfunctioned, including ebo-jagers, visi-therms, etc.
If you read the reviews in the link above (on cichlid-forum) you'll soon find that there is no such thing as a brand that has not failed & boiled someones fish. I ran a poll a few yrs back on a local forum where out of 75 members who voted, 26 of them (41.94%) had heaters fail in the ON position at some time during their fish keeping hobby.
I have seen the photos from some of those mishaps, a lot of dead fish, some of them being very expensive fish.

I've had a good run for the past few yrs using visi-therm stealths in my tanks, but in tanks where I simply can't afford to lose the fish, I run those heaters through a controller unit.

Controllers add another layer of protection, as they create a situation where you now have 'two' devices that need to fail in order for your fish to get boiled. IMO redundancy is always a good thing in this hobby.

HTH

Thanks much RD911.

No problem, glad to help. But as others have suggested, unless you are keeping tropical species with your natives, or plan on heating the water to trigger spawning, a heater really isn't required.