AquaTop Aquarium Heater - 200W

Lesson learned: You get what you pay for. The Aqueon aquarium heaters work better (they were recommended to me) but it's almost twice the price on Amazon and even more at the pet store so I got this. I bought it the last week of June to treat ick in a tank. It was always about 3 degrees off but I dealt with it. I used it occasionally, I'd say I used this heater for a total of 15 days before it malfunctioned. I decided about a week ago to buy some tropical fish and I tried to get this to heat to a constant 77 degrees. Worked fine before bed, but I woke up the next morning to dead fish and a tank temperature of 86 to 88 degrees! It was HOT in there! I call the company and what do I hear?

"Maybe your thermometers are inaccurate." BOTH OF THEM?

"Is it hot outside your house?" Does it matter? The tank is INSIDE my house, and my room temperature is a steady 68 degrees. I live in the Arctic. No, it is not hot outside my house.

I don't know about you, but when I get asked stupid questions like that by people blaming everything but their product for a malfunction, I get kind of annoyed. I was promised a refund by the guy I called for support, then their returns department denied it because I've had the unit for almost 3 months. They said they do not issue refunds after 14 days, and if I want to use the warranty I have to pay to ship the item to them! For a $16 heater, that is not even worth my time or money paying to ship it back, let alone the cost of gas to drive to the post office! What kind of "customer service" is that? I'm sure they bet on people not bothering to pay return shipping for the warranty and instead buy a new one!

This heater was not accurate from the start. If it's going to kill my fish and I have to "re-calibrate it" (their suggestion) over and over again to get it to work temporarily, I am not going to use it and risk a repeat of fish casualties. I unplugged it, pulled it out of the water minutes later and it burnt my hand it was so hot. It smelled strongly of burnt rubber. Unsafe. Do not buy Aquatop!!! Spend a few bucks more on a quality product.

I purchased both the 100W and 200W heaters. Both had the same problems. It was not one defective heater ... it's a common problem!

Last time I am buying an Aquatop product of any kind!

That's it! Plain and simple. It says FULLY SUBMERSIBLE even on the sticker that was on the heater itself when I took it out of the box. Until you read the directions that say "Do Not Put Below Water Line"! Seriously? Ridiculous! Misleading they should have to rewrite their product description for false representation. I'm returning the item at my own inconvenience. I shop Amazon quite a bit, but this is total BS guys. Thanks.

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This heater's temp setting is as loose as a goose not accurate at all. Tested on an EMPTY (no fishies or plants thank goodness) aquarium that had a heater already in it. Temp was 74. We have 3 thermometers one digital, one float-about, and one glass sticky (which I don't depend on too much, but it gives me a quick reference). Anyway, we put the heater in and let it acclimate for 3 hours. We turned it up until it clicked on. You'd think we'd be around 74, right? WRONG! It was closer to 66. (Maybe it's because we're back on standard time?...just kidding!! It just made about that much sense.) Anyway, thinking maybe the response was just delayed, we turned it down again, and went much slower giving 5-10 seconds between adjustments. Still turned on at around 66.

But that isn't even the worst part. This is: We removed the old heater and watched the temp. The heater didn't click on until the temperature (measured by our thermometers) dropped to around 65, and it stayed on for what seemed to be forever until it reached 76 degrees!! I was just ready to unplug the thing when it finally clicked off. That is one mighty big swing, folks! I'm glad I was being methodical and patient about setting up this new tank, or my fish would have been seriously stressed.

If you care about your fish, and I'm sure you do or you wouldn't be looking for a heater, DO NOT get this one. Move on.

As a side note: Heater is advertised "fully submersible". When you first open the box, the cardboard insert has a sticker on it that says "fully submersible". However, when you read through the booklet, it says clearly to leave the top above the waterline. I found a YouTube video that says they don't recommend fully submersible use. Frustrated, I found Aquatop's email and wrote to them asking if it's fully submersible or not. They said yes. ...for what it's worth!

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I set the heater to 80 it heated the water to 105 and was still "on". It's for use on a quarantine tank so it only killed a few new fish, and possibly the bacteria. I am getting a replacement, ONLY because of the limited use it will get. I would not trust running one on one on a show tank. I'll update the review after the second one has seen some use.....

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This unit works as it describes and is good at it.

However......... when you take it out of the box there is a "Fully Submersible" sticker that you must take off before putting it in thr water. This is quite funny as it clearly states "Do not put below water line".

So this is NOT fully submersible. I called tech support which was friendly and fast and they said that while they do not really "recommend putting the dial portion of the heater below the water line" their engineers "say that this does work under water fine". So it sounds like it might or might not work, and does not have the confidence of tech support to be placed below water line. Also the top part is much thicker than the actual heater as you can clearly see, however this is a problem as the lip of most aquariums comes out just a bit, leaving you to have to place the suction cups way at the bottom of the heater to be able to grab any of the glass since the top part must be out of water.....