extreme_tooth_decay

I think the typical solution is to put them on something foam like a mouse pad.

That is what I do too. Check valves are unreliable, and they seriously take power from the pump. Just keep the pump above the water.

LINK

Nice video. I like how carefully the guy picked it up. It looked about 1/4 the size of the one that looked fake. It almost fit in that guy's hand.

That same coconut crab pic pops up all the time. Sure looks fake to me.

Indeed that is true, as it says on their box. Although I have my new Eheim/Jager totally submerged for some time a few times...some guy at TFP told me in his opinion they are just as submersible as they were when they were labeled as submersible...I wouldn't recommend that, though.

If I've learned anything from the "unbreakable" stealth heaters, what a heater is made out of is immaterial. The quality of it's construction is paramount. There is no problem with a glass heater that is well constructed. There are stories of LFS beating EJ heaters on the counter to show their strength, and showing it's resistance to breaking under even extreme circumstances.

This reasoning assumes there is something better about a new heater than a used one. I am not convinced. You are just as likely to throw out a good heater and replace it with a faulty one, and nuke your tank. Replace it often enough, and you'll get a junky one for sure.

Here is a funny (short) video...it is obviously a dumb thing to do and should not be done with any heater...but it shows that Jager can withstand some misuse. Listen and you can hear the guy say "Acthung!"

I use Jager. They have by far the best reviews as far as I can tell.

I wonder how many of those 3 years it was sizzling your tank and you didn't realize it...you know it didn't crack between the last time it was on and the time you found it They are junk.

Long time no update!

Looks like he started another thread: LINK

Long time no update!

Yeah, good point. We still don't know if it was even the heater at all. And if it was the heater, what brand it is/was.

Short answer: Too hard to tell, too little data, etc. I just looked over the 7 "stealth failure threads" I linked above (LINK) and those threads are from the Jan 2009-Dec 2009 time frame (about 6-18 months ago). In the newest thread, the complainant (phisigs79) was saying the heater was not 2 years old yet, so it seems those heaters are all probably fairly old. I could not find the word "pro" in any of those threads, but that is just a small sample. I don't know when the new Chinese versions hit the market, but it seems all or most of those threads involve heaters which were manufactured quite a while ago, so I doubt many if any of them were "Pro", but that is just a sampling of threads here and is not very scientific. Good data is hard to come by. If it is true that the newer stealths are worse than the older stealths, I'll need to think of a crummier car than a Yugo to compare them to. The only thing that I am really confident about is that there are hugely more failure stories for stealths than jager. Of course not every one will fail, and some people will have heaters that last forever, etc. Some people have Yugos that last forever, too. I just assert it is wise to buy a product known to have less failures on average, especially when the prices are the same-ish. Indeed, this thread is supremely jacked. One of those hot button issues, I guess. I actually thought we were done a couple times.