Jim O

Wow, so much for my theory that you could delay the onset of that with a controller....

And doing this from the beginning would greatly delay the appearance of the flashing "EL," since the heater would take much longer to reach the requisite number of hours before that "feature" kicks in. Although it obviously has other benefits (i.e., redundancy and safety), the cost of an Inkbird controller is quite out of proportion to these cheap heaters. I must say that, whether it's a flashing "EL" or a yellow light, it's disconcerting that ACO and/or the ODM finds this "end of life" warning to be needed. It appears that there is a lack of confidence in the design. Combined with other complaints of these heaters starting to make noise or just plain failing, I'm not sure that these things were ready for prime time....

OK, thanks. I didn't realize that the heater was in v2. Makes sense now.

I don't get it. The screenshot that nabokovfan87 posted says that a yellow light will come on after two years of operation, which sounds like it would be OK. But it doesn't say anything about the display flashing "EL," which sounds very irritating. And the downloaded manual also mentions the yellow light but not the "EL." Tamra, how long had the heater been in operation before the "EL" started flashing?

Thank you very much for your response! Thank you!

Thanks. I had mistakenly thought that Aquarium Co-Op provided customer support via this forum, since there's a link to it in the "help" and "contact us" sections of the web site...

Two questions for ACO: When using the light with a timer (I already use TP-Link Kasa smart plugs, as you recommend, with other lights), does it still gently ramp up and down when powering on and off? As I write this, your site shows all but the 24-inch version as unavailable. Do you have an estimate as to when the other sizes will be back in stock (it's the 30-inch unit I'd initially be trying)?

I've often seen a recommendation of one snail per each five gallons. I wouldn't treat it as a hard and fast rule, but it's probably a reasonable guideline. I have nerites in three tanks, and I'm just a bit below that ratio. I've started at about half that level and just added a few until they seemed to have any algae or diatoms under control. And I move them around from tank to tank as needed. I agree with the other poster, Phirefase, who is annoyed by the eggs. I also find them quite annoying but I'm willing to accept them as the tradeoff for the algae eating. I also have some mystery snails and I really like them--they're bigger, prettier, and more fun to watch than nerites. But they just don't do the algae-eating job that the nerites do.

Has Northfin food fallen from favor? I was surprised not to see it mentioned in this discussion, as I know it had developed quite a following a few years back. In many of the forums, it seemed to be getting people to defect from NLS...

Unlike Seachem does with Prime, Fritz tells us what's in ACCR: sodium hydroxymethanesulfonate; i.e., exactly the same thing as Cloram-X or Amquel. And as varianidguy pointed out, the dosage of ACCR/Cloram-X/Amquel is MUCH higher than with Seachem Safe, but the pricing doesn't reflect that. Safe is likely to be the better value in dollars spent per amount of water treated. Another product that is just as concentrated as Safe and often a bit less expensive is Continuum Aquatics Fraction D, which is available on Amazon.