Cory

I haven't seen the progress myself in probably 10 days. But it's definitely a slow and steady type of thing. The goal is being open for September. This is the latest picture I have. A decent amount has changed since then.

While not impossible, there are some challenges, like water doesn’t let Bluetooth or Wi-Fi go through it. So it would need to have part of it outside the tank. The second challenge we face is so far we haven’t felt comfortable developing apps. It’s a whole different ballgame. I think we could physically get it working etc, however making apps easy to use is another level. Also we’d want to scope it for future products, the podcast, our website etc. it has cross our mind but then we remember how much trouble the fluval app causes customer service. There is just a portion of people who don’t know how to really use Bluetooth or their phone.

I recommend having a way to double check temps from time to time. I use a kitchen thermometer for this.

Yep, go for it 😉

This is fun, would you mind if I did some of my own on my community tab?

I don't think most people will experience the burn from a heater. I've seen it happen with stingrays and eels. Mostly fish that like to wedge between stuff. The average community tank doesn't experience this. The next case is for monster fish, where big fish get spooked and slam into it, the guard helps it from breaking and shorting out. The most likely use for a heater guard for the average community tank owner is dropping it, it's likely to live through the drop. Also it helps during shipping. Often times features like these are like security guards. They perform their job if nothing goes wrong. So by no one breaking in, it proves the security guard is working, not necessarily that a security guard isn't needed.

We talked about this in a meeting yesterday. For we are probably like 18+ months out from that, but it is on our radar lol.

Since I'm forced to study it, amazon usually does something different. Amazon's path is to let people sell on their site, observe the numbers being sold. Once a product crosses a threshold, have their version made at a much higher volume. An example would be Seachem prime. Lets say you have 15 vendors selling seachem prime on amazon. Each vendor doesn't know what the others are selling. Heres your vendors: Vendor 1: 1000 units per month vendor 2: 67 units vendor 3: 6500 units vendor 4: 700. Lets say the total is 60k units sold a month. However no vendor knows this except for Amazon. Now they go to Seachem and say we'll buy 600k bottles all at one go for price X. Seachem now sells directly to Amazon, and they undercut all the 15 other vendors. This is a no risk situation for Amazon cause they already know the demand. If seachem says no, then you get Amazon basics dechlorinator, which will be favored over Seachem prime in the search and listings. The difference is, we try to research a product and improve with something we find is having troubles. Amazon, finds a good selling product and reproduces it. This is why we don't want to sell on Amazon, we'd just be feeding them the information they use to put a company like us out of business. Here is a video that explains it. Peak Design is a smaller camera bag company and this happened to them last year. Often times you can have multiple people selling the same product. We run into this. if you look on amazon there's probably 15 companies selling the same auto feeder we do. But if you don't look close, features can be missing. Half of them don't have the rechargable battery and instead take batteries. At the time of us working on it, no one was selling them. By the time we launched after doing all of our stress testing, changing how things looked etc, there were like 3 or 4 companies selling it. One being a company selling our same unit for $49.99. I think the differences are, we actually test, and try to improve products, rewrite directions, provide a warranty, good customer service etc. There are a lot of companies that say lets bring in 5 auto feeders, Put em all on Amazon, whichever does best we'll keep going, drop the other 4. This seems ok, until you realize what about the people who bought the 4 other products that worked poorly that might be 4-20k people who received an inferior product. We run into this all the time, several heaters didn't work out, several lights didn't work out, air pumps etc. We view it as our job to do all of that work for our customers so that they can believe in us. There has been a big movement lately with people tired of knock offs on amazon. Whether it's just a look a like product for cheaper, or whether you think you're buying a branded shirt and it turns out its counterfeit. Its definitely a gamble to actually test things. It's a bummer when someone beats you to market and sells a product they haven't tested. Then we look like we copied them, when we had been working on it for a year already. Anyways back to heaters, I hope they continue to do well for everyone, yes there are some competing heaters that look similar. I'd wager they didn't test the guards like I did. I have different guard housing prototype heaters in my fish room right now to see what hole design we thought was best. Mine were tested specifically in a bristlenose pleco tank where babies could go in and out. I didn't experience problems with any of the guards we tested, but if we had, we would have avoided that problem for you ahead of time.

You joke about dog products, but Randy and I have strongly considered it. Mostly when we are having trouble finding the products we want. Like why is it so hard to get a good collar/name tag for a small dog? They're all too stiff, or too thick, or don't get small enough etc. Some day I do think we'll expand into some other stuff we use in our daily lives. Currently we are testing USB cables 😉 What started as a longer usb cable for our air pumps, now has expanded into, we may as well test type C and lightning as well.

I wouldn't say the guards are easily serviceable as in taking them apart.

I'm sure they could get stuck. However I tested the heater where I breed super red longfins and had no problems.

I would try starting the light at 60% or so. The plants you have aren't too demanding.

What size aquarium are you putting it on? For me personally I would set the strength, set it to about 10 hours, and have it be off during the night time.

For longevity I recommend a cover. You also get the benefit of no jumping fish, less evaporation and holding heat in. Over long periods of time I think moisture could affect a fluval flight. For sure it'll affect a finnex light in not much time at all. @AnjumI think you'll just end up buying anew light with no cover after like 4-6 months. So instead I think the path forward is retrofitting it with some DIY type lights or buying an led light to replace it. You can also line the inside of your light with foil, or foil tape, this would improve it a little bit as well. Also fluorescent lights typically get replaced once a year because they put out quite a bit less light as they live on.

If it were my tank here is how I would proceed. I would probably have the light at 50%. For roughly 10 hours. I'd only be dosing the Easy green and saving the Easy Iron until the plants are larger as Easy Green has iron in it. As growth continues monitor nitrates and adjust easy green as needed.

I'd say for the average person, most dechlorinators will be equal. Some things to look out for would be to make sure if you have chloramine, that it'll treat that as well as just the standard chlorine. Outside of that it comes down to price and a few "benefits". I don't think most people need the benefits provided by different ones most of the time. The good news is, for the most part, this is one area of the hobby where when you read the package, they basically do that. So if you needed some more kH, you could use hikari ultimate, if you needed aloe for a wounded fish, you could use Stress Coat. If you needed to get rid of some heavy metals you could use Prime etc. I myself use Fritz because I like the pump head we put on the 8oz bottle, and I like people that work at the company I've met. For many years before that I used Prime. But I've also used others as well. If you can find a good deal on any particular one. I'd buy that when I needed it.

I think it's a problem with keywords. Like myself, when I hear detoxify, I don't really know the definition. However what Prime, Complete and some others do is break down some compounds and bind other compounds. usually this lasts for 24 hours, so that our filtration can then break it down further. In the instance where we have extra ammonia we can dose more to bind that up for 24 hours. As I'm not a chemist, I don't understand how it would remove heavy metals and such as some claim. I think in general the products work well for what I need, which is dechlorination.

Usually you want coarse sponges and such to trap debris before getting to things like bio rings and fine pads. Depending on the type of canister, it may be top to bottom flow or bottom to top. You can also run the coarse sponge on the intake.

What are you wanting compared? Price is half, size is half, cord is longer. Perhaps reliability? I can't really speak to that. I've had like 1 or 2 fluval heaters fail on me over the years. I've never had one of these fail. But that doesn't mean these are more reliable. I need more years and more heaters in my own use to give an opinion like that. They both have LED displays, they both have blinking errors. etc.

@Sun.singh1991 Do you have lids on it? Is it in your house? If so I think one could do it.

I'd say potentially. It's a big cost to launch an electronic as each run has minimums. I think if this goes well, we'd look at some data and see if 25 or 50 watt made sense next.

The work around... and yes, I realize a product shouldn't need a work around. Is pairing it with a temperature controller. In this instance it would be 10,000 hours only when it was heating. Currently no plants for 2-300 watt. Often times the more wattage makes them less reliable, more heat = faster degradation. basically the circuit board is the same size, where the heat is 2-3x, and cooks it faster.

Here are some pics I just took. For sizing to get updated on the website in the new couple hours.

Here is an additional video from the manufacturer of how the EL feature will look at 10k hours/14 months of continuous use.

Here is the video I did that should cover most questions.