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Aquarium Co-Op 100 Watt Heater


Cory
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On 4/29/2022 at 5:40 PM, Cory said:

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.

That would be awesome. When I set-up my first betta tank the biggest challenge was finding an adjustable heater that was small and reliable.   

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Not to thread crap; but it would be nice if you could introduce a smaller version that is 50 or 25 watt for 5 gallon aquariums. I've had a lot of problems finding reliable heaters sub 100 watt. because of continous failers (including sticking on until the fishes boiled); i had to bite the bullet for an expensive hygger 50 watt. I suppose on could put 100 watt heater in a 5 gallon but seems a bit over kill.

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@Cory
I ordered my heaters on Friday night.   Received them before 1:00 pm on Monday.  In the tank and plugged in before 1:30.   And submitted a review.   
And I believe I submitted the 1st review.

Thanks

On 4/29/2022 at 8:10 PM, Brian said:

@Cory

i think I’m going to go order 5 or 6 right now. I’m a little OCD and I thought the company name and logo would drive me nuts.  But… I just saw the photos and with that size I’m pretty sure I can hide them.

 

 

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Added another order that hopefully should be showing up this week. Forgot to add the heaters during my first order over the weekend. Going to be testing these out on x2 20H's and x3 40B's and go from there. Think I might stick with non guarded heaters for growout tanks just so I'm not risking fry getting stuck, plus running 100w's in 10's seems like overkill. I will be checking back if lower wattage options come on the market for 10's and ideally ones without guards on them.

@Cory are the guards and heater serviceable? As in can I pull the guards off easily if something gets stuck or pest snails decide to crawl in and cook? 

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Look what came in today!

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Waiting for my temp controller before I put it in. Packaging looks great inside and out. Took a size comparison pick that might help some people. It's compact. More so than I even thought. I like it.

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They are here 😁. I know folks were concerned about holes and fry being trapped. This is an open design I can see light throughout the interior and I do not feel my fish, fry or shrimp could possibly get trapped. They can get in and out at will. If the holes were smaller then I would be concerned.  In my experience it’s the larger fish that tend to get burnt from sleeping to close to exposed heaters in hot tanks not fry shrimp etc. and not in typical 77degree or less tanks. Mine will be in with CPD and their fry, Pygmy corydora, guppy fry, shrimp, breeding longfin lemon bn pleco etc.  I feel confident and comfortable with this design. THANK YOU @Cory 🤗this is a heater dream come true with its compact and elegant design.  The exterior control is something I have been trying for a few months in other brands and love it but the heaters were even longer than standard. Looking forward to ordering the rest for upgrades in the coming months.   

 

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PS please excuse my nosey cats whiskers

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KITTYYYYYYYYYYYYYY 🥰 ....I write a lot of reviews on a side gig and I have issues with that from time to time. They've yet to make their public debut though- I end up deleting those. 😄 In this case totally appropriate.

Edited by xXInkedPhoenixX
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On 5/2/2022 at 6:16 PM, Guppysnail said:

They are here 😁. I know folks were concerned about holes and fry being trapped. This is an open design I can see light throughout the interior and I do not feel my fish, fry or shrimp could possibly get trapped. They can get in and out at will. If the holes were smaller then I would be concerned.  In my experience it’s the larger fish that tend to get burnt from sleeping to close to exposed heaters in hot tanks not fry shrimp etc. and not in typical 77degree or less tanks. Mine will be in with CPD and their fry, Pygmy corydora, guppy fry, shrimp, breeding longfin lemon bn pleco etc.  I feel confident and comfortable with this design. THANK YOU @Cory 🤗this is a heater dream come true with its compact and elegant design.  The exterior control is something I have been trying for a few months in other brands and love it but the heaters were even longer than standard. Looking forward to ordering the rest for upgrades in the coming months.   

The concern isn't with fish getting burns. In the 25+ years I've been in the hobby on top of my Dad's 60+ years, we've never run into an issue with fish getting heater burns. Worst case is a tank cooking or going too cool. 

Smaller and more spaced out holes would actually be better in terms of not letting fry in, but when working with designers you have to meet limits with what they have and/or what they can produce. Especially when working on creating something new adds to the design and manufacturing costs. Most midlevel swimmers shouldn't be an issue with getting into the heater, but my main concern is with baby pleco's as they tend to get in every nook in the tanks I rear them in. 

These are just my concerns with what I keep. Everyone will have different opinions and experiences with any product. Being that Cory and team put a lot of effort into R&D and follow up with copious testing is why I decided to push aside the concerns and give them a shot. Being that ACO does take in customer feedback and will work on bettering products for hobbyists was another reason I wanted to give this a try. If I run into something, I'd like to be able to provide the feedback if there is an opportunity for something to get fixed.  I don't see there being a specific problem, but I won't know until I try it. 

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Thank you @Cory Been waiting forever for this since you mentioned it long ago .  The design of it  and the feature letting us know when to start watching for a failure is amazing.   Also ultra fast shipping.  Ordered on Friday received it in Ohio on Monday 👍

 

 

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Edited by GoYankees10
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On 5/3/2022 at 3:12 AM, GoYankees10 said:

Thank you @Cory Been waiting forever for this since you mentioned it long ago .  The design of it  and the feature letting us know when to start watching for a failure is amazing.   Also ultra fast shipping.  Ordered on Friday received it in Ohio on Monday 👍

 

 

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Has coop expended their food line? 🤣

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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.

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On 5/3/2022 at 12:34 PM, Cory said:

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 use cat collars on my tiny dogs.  Anything over 10 pounds you can find dog collars, but less than that, it’s easier to just get cat collars.  Plus cat collars often come with bells making it less likely for a tiny to get stepped on.

Plus you can often find more colors, with bling, etc, in cat collars.

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On 5/3/2022 at 1:34 PM, Cory said:

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.

Isn't this basically the Amazon path? Start out with a niche focus, then start to expand, then out of no where you're cornering the entire market for a ton of products 😁

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On 5/3/2022 at 10:45 AM, Tihshho said:

Isn't this basically the Amazon path? Start out with a niche focus, then start to expand, then out of no where you're cornering the entire market for a ton of products 😁

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.

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This is why you're a treasure trove of info and why you know how to run a business. Thanks for the info Cory! By being Amazon, I didn't mean going through and being a market place for other vendors, but more so slowly grow from being Aquarium Co-Op to 'Co-Op' who now sells Aquarium products, other pet products, and quality of life electronics lol. 

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On 4/29/2022 at 5:40 PM, Cory said:

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.

I would definitely be interested in a 25 watt version that was designed for the Ziss brine shrimp hatchery, but also happened to work well in nano tanks.

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@Cory  oh  I love the design so compact  way smaller then my Eheim  Mine takes up to much room in  my tank

glad to hear one will handle a 55 gallon with glass lids by it self  ..  i know 2 heaters is the best but  personally it just me I like one heater in a tank  .. My  current heater is working perfect but I might have to buy one ☝️  😊 and use my current one for a backup   Have not bought anything from ACO yet I did not like …

not sure if my pelco will like it he hangs on the current one and sleeps along with the ACO sponge filter Usually my heater runs mostly in the winter I  keep my house 75-76   but  here in my location the winters gets very cold  I need the heater 

Edited by Bev C
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On 5/3/2022 at 11:19 AM, Tazalanche said:

I would definitely be interested in a 25 watt version that was designed for the Ziss brine shrimp hatchery, but also happened to work well in nano tanks.

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.

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On 5/3/2022 at 7:45 AM, Tihshho said:

Isn't this basically the Amazon path? Start out with a niche focus, then start to expand, then out of no where you're cornering the entire market for a ton of products 😁

🤣 .... "We sell books!".... 20 years later .... "We sell everything!"

 

On heater related things though. I have never seen the appeal for having a housing on heaters to keep fish off of the heater itself. Seems unnecessary. My heaters don't get scalding hot. Maybe some do? Seems like it just makes a bigger product/package to deal with and places for fish/snails/shrimp to hide. Hiding places are good though.

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On 5/3/2022 at 1:21 PM, Cory said:

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.

Nice. By that time, I will probably have gone through 3-6 of the el cheapo 25 watt heaters I'm currently using & will welcome something dependable.

Edited by Tazalanche
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On 5/3/2022 at 11:21 AM, Minanora said:

🤣 .... "We sell books!".... 20 years later .... "We sell everything!"

 

On heater related things though. I have never seen the appeal for having a housing on heaters to keep fish off of the heater itself. Seems unnecessary. My heaters don't get scalding hot. Maybe some do? Seems like it just makes a bigger product/package to deal with and places for fish/snails/shrimp to hide. Hiding places are good though.

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.

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