As of late it's been warming up where I live which means I've turned the cooler on. It's kept me cool but it had a negative effect on my poor fishes water When I had my cooler on the water temp dropped from 77 to a 74*F!! Since then I've kept my cooler off. Would it hurt to have another heater in my 5 gallon aquarium? I just want to live in harmony with out either of us living uncomfortable :-? I would buy a better heater but my piggy bank is empty D:
If you put them at opposite ends it should actually help balance out the heat. I keep 2 heaters in our larger tanks. The heaters just shouldn't have to work as hard to keep the right temp.
Generally you want them set to two temperatures, the stronger one to your primary temp and the smaller one to a lower temp (about 2 degrees lower). This will keep them from over-running on residual heat as they cool down from being on.
Make sure they're at least a foot apart but having them truly opposite of each other isn't good, have them both on the back, at each end is fine.
Generally if you have a X gallon tank you can use a heater for X gallons set to 77° and a half-X gallon heater set to 75° and it should be able to keep the temp in the 76 range if the ambient air is 62°.
If your air is below 60° regularly you need to create a protective environment for the tank. Cardboard sides for insulation against breezes, plastic bags with poly-fill to plug gaps that evaporation will occur through and so on.
As much as some plants hate it I do advise with betta that if the house air drops below 65° you should keep the light on continuously to keep the air in the tank somewhat warmer than the environment outside it.
With two ten gallon heaters, light on continuously and cardboard wrapped with a towel I've kept my girls fine at 45° in the house. Scary but doable.
It is important to insulate the sides of the tank instead of just adding heaters because the glass of the tank will become stressed if the outside-to-inside difference gets too large. They are not tempered glass, there's no predictable point at which they will fail even though generally the quality of the glass used is very high.
Thank you Thunderloon for your detailed and informative answer! And thank you everyone for taking the time to answer my question
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