Heater Question

[Cosmo]

I responded to an earlier heater discussion mentioning the fact that I had the Jehmco controller and it worked great but got a response from another member that he had had a Jehmco controller and it almost cooked his fish.

Mine keep the tanks at a very even temp., but since I lost a tank of Discus to a bad heater 20 years ago, I'm a little concerned now that I might come home to a disaster again.

Anyone else out there have or had the Jehmco heater controller, and if so, any problems with it?

Please let me know
Thanks,
Jim

[Lance_Krueger]

Jim,
I'm the guy that had the Jehmco controller almost fry my fish. Luckily I caught it before it did. I had never heard any negative about these controllers/heaters until I had problems with mine. Since I got mine fixed about 6 months ago, it seems to be doing a good job. The thing that concerned me is that John told me he had "a bunch more he needed to send in, and would send my controller back to the company to see if they'll fix it." I talked to a discus seller on the board about this, and he said that John's claim that it was water damage (though there's no way it could have been) was "what he tells everyone." John claimed that the company would probably not fix mine because it was "water damaged" but they ended up finally fixing mine at my insistance John send it in, though he wasn't going to. Just tried to sell me a new one.
The point I want to get across is that these are mechanical devices, and can and will fail. Even if the controller is away from the heating rods, or not. It's an integral unit, and if the controller sticks, then you're going to have cooked fish. There are no "fail safes" in this system, unless you add seperate ones that have sensors that will shut the electricity off to the unit should the temperature get to a certain point. I think all heaters have a chance of failing. I think the safest method is to have two totally separate, lower wattage heaters, that are connected to each other in no way. One of them will work harder than the other, but who cares. If it's safer, that's worth it to me. ;)
Lance Krueger

[Cosmo]

Hey Lance,

Yeah, John gave me the same response, they only fail if they get wet. He swears he's sold thousands and had no problems (except for water damage of course). So far they are working great (I have two for two tanks), but as you say, any mechanical system can fail. Thinking about hooking the two together, so if either one fails the other would prevent an overheat situtation - very expensive solution though :)
Thanks again,
Jim

[mmoroz]

Sorry to bring up an old thread..

Lance if you're reading this, could you please tell me what exactly happened with the jehmco controller? (I also PM'ed you :) ). I was planning to buy the exact same one, and was hoping it just disconnects power in case of any problems...

Thanks!!