ACO Heater making noise?

[Jurrian Hering]

In the last few days I’ve been having a unique problem with an ACO 100W heater I have. It’s been on a 40B for about three weeks set at 74 degrees. And for some reason recently when the heating element is on it makes a sizzling noise. When I unplug or turn the temp down to make the heating element turn off the sound goes away. The tank prior to that had a 50W ACO heater in it that never had that issue. (I upgraded in preparation to crank the temp to the 80s for some rams.)

Any thoughts?
 

Here’s a link to a video with the sound.

 

[DaveO]

I would mount the heater low in the water column and make sure there is no air trapped inside of the housing.  

[nabokovfan87]

Yeah, this is similar to what mine is doing.  Thread here.  I thought at first it was the coolant in the minifridge.
 

 

[flyingcow]

Mine did that for a while then just stopped when I moved it out of the 10 and into the 20L. I think that says something for it possibly being trapped air.

[Gannon]

Guess I need to move my AC heater away from my sponge filter when I get home haha

[Jurrian Hering]

On 2/5/2023 at 11:05 PM, DaveO said:

I would mount the heater low in the water column and make sure there is no air trapped inside of the housing.  

I moved it down and cleared all the air in it and there were a fair amount of bubbles in it. However about 15 min later it was doing it again and filled with air. Very strange.

[nabokovfan87]

Yeah. I just posted a video of mine in the clicking thread.  I am going to try to keep track and note if the heater is actively on when it clicks, etc.  After each WC I am going to disturb and release all the bubbles internally if there are any that get trapped.  I didn't see any on mine when I did that.  Hopefully it's a break-in issue and goes away.  Very weird.

[DaveO]

On 2/6/2023 at 3:35 PM, Jurrian Hering said:

I moved it down and cleared all the air in it and there were a fair amount of bubbles in it. However about 15 min later it was doing it again and filled with air. Very strange.

That heater traps a lot of air. Just try clearing it some more and make sure no bubbles are blowing into it from a filter or something.