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Building A Budget Reef Aquarium: The Heater


In Part #4 of our 30-episode series on Building A Budget REEF Aquarium, I make a heater recommendation.

Pretty much every reef aquarium is going to need some kind of temperature control. It'll need a heater, chiller, or both. And in most parts of the world, it's going to be a heater. Even in places like sunny Phoenix, Arizona during the winter it's going to get cold, and we're going to need a heater inside this tank.

There are a lot of options when you get heaters. For the most part, it's going to be based on the material of the heater. You're going to see plastic heaters, glass heaters, and titanium heaters. I have not noticed that big of a difference between all of them. They all seem to be equally reliable. They all have their own problems.

What I've picked out for this Budget REEF Aquarium is a Lifegard Aquatics 200 Watt Pre-Set Quartz Glass Aquarium Heater. This guy is only about $20 (2024 price), which is great for a budget heater. And I actually like that it's preset because whenever I buy an adjustable heater I typically set it at 78° and then never touch it again. If you don't get a pre-set heater, the little adjustment dial is one more place where something can fail. This heater is preset at 78°, which is the perfect reef tank temperature, so I don't have to touch anything. I just drop this inside of the aquarium and plug it in, and everything's done. Very simple. We really don't need much more than this little basic heater.

In the previous video on filtration, we picked the Tunze Comline ReefPack 250. Along with the Comline DOC Skimmer 9004, the ReefPack comes with Comline Filter 3162, which has a slot to slide your heater into. This keeps the tank looking very clean. And that's a huge benefit of the system we've picked out. We weren't certain that the heater would fit into the Comline Filter without removing the heater end cap, but it does fit without removing the end cap. You'll see in the video that although our filter, skimmer, and heater are in the tank, you will barely notice them. The heater is inside the filter and the filter and skimmer are black against the black background (I spraypainted black the outside back of the tank). Once the live rock is added and the coral is growing you'll barely notice the filter and skimmer.

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