# SunSun Inline Heater Review



## Sean W.

Hello all, and welcome to my review of the SunSun Inline heater! 

This particular review will be on the EH-300 Model, which is a 300W heater.

I am setting up a new tank and was really wanting to get an inline heater to keep the amount of equipment inside the relatively small 20 gallon long tank to a minimum. As far as I knew, the only option that would solve this was the Hydor inline heater, but at around $60 ( $90 at my LFS, that I like to support whenever I can ), I could not justify the cost when I had a perfectly good submersible heater sitting in my aquarium " junk drawer ".

Searching on ebay, I came across the " External Heater Adjustable 20-35degree for Aquarium Fish Tank ", AKA Sun Sun inline heater. It ships from China and is $26 with free shipping. Note, that there are two different models, the EH-300 and EH-500. As far as I can tell, the EH-500 is only available in a 220-240V model, which wont fly here in North America. 

I tried to find a review or an unboxing or a YouTube video of this heater, but couldnt find anything, so that is why I am writing this.

Here is a screen shot from the ebay listing, note the ebay item number circled in red.


















So I figured I would be the guinea pig and order one of these heaters and put it through its paces and let you know what I think. I clicked the buy it now button and two weeks later It arrived in my mail box.

Here is the retail packaging









Almost all the writing is in Chinese, so Im not entirely sure what it says 









Here is the otherside









This is what comes in the box, the heater itself and three sets of different sized barb fittings. I can confirm that this heater would work with the Eheim 2215 and the SunSun 704, extrapolate from that what you can 










Here it is installed. pretty simple setup. Since the instructions were in Chinese, I had to figure out how to set the temperature I wanted. I was surprised that the heater was in Fahrenheit and not Celsius, but I just kept pushing the green button until I got it to do what I wanted. Its pretty easy to figure out.










I did notice its about 1 degree off from my in tank thermometer, which is easy enough to adjust for. 

I guess that completes my review... :nerd:

its a $26 inline heater, that heats your aquarium water... Nothing to write home about and If you need a heater or would like to get a piece of equpiemnt out of the tank, I think this is a solid option.

I will update this post if it catches on fire and burns down my house :wink2:


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## Freemananana

Sean W. said:


> I will update this post if it catches on fire and burns down my house :wink2:


You could double down and buy an Inkbird temperature controller for another $25. >


Solid review, IMO, on a piece of equipment. Looks promising.


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## Hephaestus

This is perfect. I've been trying to find a way to justify buying a Hydor inline heater for my 7.5gal build, but just couldn't do it due to cost. This would be a great alternate option.

Hopefully it doesn't burn your house down!


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## Carpathian

Warning, as with all products there are duds. I received mine and would heat for approximately 30 seconds and then threw an error code. E8 (manual states - Temperature probe 2: temp more than 93°C, open-drain, or short circuit). Assuming I wasn't cooking my fish and the connectors were tight and I had flow through the unit I narrowed it down to short circuit. I was lucky enough to have the seller refund me without returning the item. Mind you this process took 3-4 weeks of back and forth communication with poor English. I also had to provide pics of the defective unit, which is fair, but still I wish I had a working heater. The day after it arrived and didn't work I found a Hydor for $32 + tax on amazon warehouse deals because the packaging had been damaged. For the additional few dollars I wasn't too heartbroken. Given this is only one case and I'm not knocking the product, I just feel other buyers should be aware that it may not work for them and the return process is not very comforting. Best of luck to all those that purchase this. If in the future I need another inline heater I would not hesitate to try this again. For the price it can't be beat, my only complaint is that it only displays in Celsius.

Edit: When first powering on I set the temp an seconds later I got error e-8, I unplugged and plugged back in. This powered the display then the indicator light came on showing it was heating, I set temp to lowest setting and the E-8 error popped. I continued to unplug unit and plug it back in messing with all temp settings. The error indicator show no consistency other than popping up every power cycle. It threw the error while heating, while on but no power to the element, immediately after setting multiple temps. I drained some water and brought the temp of tank water up to 78 and put a internal heater in the tank set it to 78. I then powered the unit on set the temp to 24°, roughly 75°, and watched it for about 3 min with no error. I left got a drink, chilled, came back 30 min later and it was blinking E-8. I tried this throughout the remainder of the evening with no success and before going to bed I ordered the Hydor. Continued to mess with it more the following day, taking it down, reconnecting the heater to the hose, checking the hose for anything that might interfere. There were no signs of hose attachment issues during initial install but I had to check everything to be sure. After no luck the second day I boxed it up and contacted the seller. Response time was fair, about 24hrs between each question asked and my response. Once deemed defective by them they messaged" we will refund after".That was the whole message. I asked them what they meant by after, assuming....after they receive their product back I will get my refund. After that reply I heard nothing back for 2 weeks until my Paypal was credited. Not the worst experience but could have been better.


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## PlantedRich

I'm glad to see a post on these but I still have a mixed feeling. I love the idea of less junk in the tank, especially the smaller tanks,,,BUT and that is a big one, I'm not there yet due to the size. 
I've killed three tanks of fish and never want to do that again. I will never put a 300 watt on my tanks and there are no smaller wattage inline that I can find. 
Two things that are really important to me. I will never run without a second temperature controller to protect me from overheating and I do not want to go nearly that large for my tanks. A heater rated at 100 watts can kill a 55 in less than 8 hours, a 50 can do a ten in less than six and a 200 does it way too fast! I've got the scars to show for it? 
Heaters are much better than they were in passed times but they are still not something to trust very far, are they? 
No doubt there will be those who say I'm silly but then there is one way to test this idea. Before declaring me crazy, how about doing a test on your setup and your tank. 
Crank that heater setting up to full bore and let it cook for a few hours. Come back and see what it has done. If it has not raised the temperature by more than 10-15 degrees, you might be safe. 
But I also would warn you not to do this with fish in the tank as you may be in for a surprise and I may not be totally crazy.


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## nel

PlantedRich said:


> I'm glad to see a post on these but I still have a mixed feeling. I love the idea of less junk in the tank, especially the smaller tanks,,,BUT and that is a big one, I'm not there yet due to the size.
> I've killed three tanks of fish and never want to do that again. I will never put a 300 watt on my tanks and there are no smaller wattage inline that I can find.
> Two things that are really important to me. I will never run without a second temperature controller to protect me from overheating and I do not want to go nearly that large for my tanks. A heater rated at 100 watts can kill a 55 in less than 8 hours, a 50 can do a ten in less than six and a 200 does it way too fast! I've got the scars to show for it?
> Heaters are much better than they were in passed times but they are still not something to trust very far, are they?
> No doubt there will be those who say I'm silly but then there is one way to test this idea. Before declaring me crazy, how about doing a test on your setup and your tank.
> Crank that heater setting up to full bore and let it cook for a few hours. Come back and see what it has done. If it has not raised the temperature by more than 10-15 degrees, you might be safe.
> But I also would warn you not to do this with fish in the tank as you may be in for a surprise and I may not be totally crazy.


You are not crazy. My 200W Eheim Jager on 345l tank got the temperature to 40C in a few hours... Now I have some made in china heater, but it's only 100W. I'm going to change it to online hydor 300W, but before that I'm buying temperature regulator. I don't trust ANY heater, so I believe sunsun won't be worse than any other, they all need another regulator.


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## r.s.hutchinson

For those looking to add a controller as well I have been using the STC-1000 controller, mind you only for a little while, but it is very popular on home-brew forums as well. Cheap to buy and easy to program and wire.


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## PlantedRich

Controllers have had some changes in the market as folks see what is needed by our group. 
These are some links to just a few of the choices that I have seen and I'm sure there are more choices out there. 
This seems to be the cheaper version which takes some DIY to wire:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/9...ing-cheap-digital-temperature-controller.html

This is a very good quality item which is really a super plug and play item:
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/9-equipment/1048137-review-inkbird-temp-controller.html

I find this to be both the low level price and the best but there are also Inkbird models in between on the price if one is not wanting some of the nice things that do add to the cost. 

My point is not to highjack the thread with recommendations for any particular controller but just a heads-up on how important I feel it is to protect yourself.


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## sohankpatel

I use the Inkbird temp controller that has a digital readout. Alarm high/alarm low. And has a heating and cooling function. It can also be used as a timer. It works very well for the price.


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## Juan Loskin

*e-1 please help*

Hi, I just find out that the heater shows an E-1 in the display. I don't know what that means and I cannot find an operation manual. Does anyone knows how to solve this? Thanks!


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## goodbytes

Wow, they didn't even make a passing attempt to make it look different than the Hydor they were knocking off. But they innovated with different size adapters for different size hoses, which is brilliant. I've been wanting to get a 304b for a while but was stopped short by my dislike for the DIY solutions for using a Hydor with the incompatible 3/4" tubing. Since you tested it on the 704, it seems your are indicating the 20mm adapter works with the larger SunSun tubing which is a huge plus.


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## KrypleBerry

goodbytes said:


> Wow, they didn't even make a passing attempt to make it look different than the Hydor they were knocking off. But they innovated with different size adapters for different size hoses, which is brilliant. I've been wanting to get a 304b for a while but was stopped short by my dislike for the DIY solutions for using a Hydor with the incompatible 3/4" tubing. Since you tested it on the 704, it seems your are indicating the 20mm adapter works with the larger SunSun tubing which is a huge plus.


I use the sunsun inline 300w with my sunsun 304B that has 3/4" tubing, fit perfectly. The heater is about 2°F off, but that is easy to adjust for. If you see an E-1 error code that means the tank temp exceeded the set temp.


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## PlantedRich

goodbytes said:


> Wow, they didn't even make a passing attempt to make it look different than the Hydor they were knocking off. But they innovated with different size adapters for different size hoses, which is brilliant. I've been wanting to get a 304b for a while but was stopped short by my dislike for the DIY solutions for using a Hydor with the incompatible 3/4" tubing. Since you tested it on the 704, it seems your are indicating the 20mm adapter works with the larger SunSun tubing which is a huge plus.


The idea of knockoff items is changing in my view. At on point, I thought it somewhat close to stealing but now I am getting a different idea as I find the original company may not be getting ripped off but that they have sold the plans, specs and permission to a Chinese group to build. They are willing to lose some sales to their former markets in exchange for having an opening in the far larger market of the new product. Maybe a case of wiling to lose a few thousand sales in North America but gain a million sales in Asia? When Eheim filters and heaters are made and ship from China, I see no reason to object to buying from China directly.


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## Kaiede

PlantedRich said:


> When Eheim filters and heaters are made and ship from China, I see no reason to object to buying from China directly.


Yeah, you can definitely get some stuff built properly for a fair price that isn't attached to a US/EU brand. I don't personally see SunSun's products as knock-offs, myself, though. The knock-offs that are bad in my mind are more common in consumer electronics. Chargers that omit circuitry designed to avoid failures and fires but made to look exactly like name-brand chargers minus the logo, counterfeit SD cards and batteries being sold as name-brand stuff in order to make huge markup on manufacturing rejects, "ghost shift" manufacturing, etc.

You could be right about designs being sold, but it isn't terribly common. It isn't impossible that this was reverse engineered either. But one thing I've started to see is that Chinese engineering is getting branded, sometimes even exclusively. So what you might think of as "Engineered in the US, Made in China" is not engineered in the US at all. And I expect to see this more and more in niche hobbies where companies have trouble affording engineers, and start outsourcing everything but the brand, or larger stores start selling store-brand equipment. I also wouldn't be terribly surprised if someone like SunSun winds up owning their own conglomerate of US brands in the aquarium trade here in a decade or two.


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## PlantedRich

At this point saying who owns which brand or company is not really something we can find out. Anybody who still buys based on where things are made is just kind of drinking the Koolaid on lots of stuff. Look inside any electronics and most of the parts are not made where the brand is known but often in ten different countries.


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## Juan Loskin

Thanks you!


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## ChrisX

PlantedRich said:


> The idea of knockoff items is changing in my view. At on point, I thought it somewhat close to stealing but now I am getting a different idea as I find the original company may not be getting ripped off but that they have sold the plans, specs and permission to a Chinese group to build. They are willing to lose some sales to their former markets in exchange for having an opening in the far larger market of the new product. Maybe a case of wiling to lose a few thousand sales in North America but gain a million sales in Asia? When Eheim filters and heaters are made and ship from China, I see no reason to object to buying from China directly.


The only thing to object to is China's fixing of their currency to the dollar, in order to avoid inflation, wage growth, and increased standard of living for it's citizens. All this so they can retain the cheap manufacturing role in the world economy. 

While many people think it is illegal and unethical, I have pondered what would happen if they had allowed their currency to float. I'm guessing its not in their cultural abilities to take the role of a western country and compete on equal footing. In other words, if they experienced inflation and lost manufacturing jobs, they would not become a center of innovation and their economy would crash.


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## [email protected]@

So after resurrecting my Vision 180, I thought I'd take a look at one of these heaters..
Being of Chinese origin, I also decided to quickly pull it apart to make sure there were no horrors lurking within.

What I have found has left me pleasantly surprised!

The operation is simple. On turning on, the temperature is shown on the display. I think mine defaulted to a maximum of 35 C. Holding the button down puts the unit into setting mode. Pressing the button repeatedly allows you to set the temperature in 0.5C increments. 
Setting up was intuitive, as the only wording on the manual I could understand was "Please read the instructions before use". I guess they forgot to translate the rest!

SO what's inside?

The PCB is fairly compact and seems to be of reasonable quality. As far as I can see from a cursory glance they have made some effort to ensure safety. Anti-track cutouts to prevent carbonisation from arcing for example and the power supply is a fully featured switching type, with a small linear regulator for the microcontroller too!
Now I did not take it all apart, so there are still aspects of the design that remain unknown. For example, there is something going on under all the insulation which has me intrigued. About 6 wires head off which seem to connect to the low voltage side of the processor. I Have not got a clue what these are for! Extra temperature sensing? (see below RE actual temp sensing), water ingress detection? I really do not know without pulling apart further, something I am not willing to do at this stage while it is working!
The heater itself is fired by a triac, which suggests it *could* potentially be PID controlled. The heater element is not what I expected either! Normally you'd expect coils of wires wrapped in or around the glass envelope. Here, there are no filaments visible!
I can only surmise they have used a thin film which would make sense as the clamps top and bottom seem to be in contact with a conductive surface on the glass. This could be a weakness and result in premature failure though, so if yours has failed, worth checking the continuity here but only if you know what you're doing!

The thermistor is interesting. It is routed through the 'handle' (the bit used to hang the heater up) it then enters a hole at the outlet. I assume they have chosen this method to isolate the thermostat from the heater itself. Quite a nice detail. The result of this, when I compare to my thermocouple based temperature probe, is that it is 0.2 deg C out! This is a phenomenal accuracy if you ask me! Now I am not up to temperature yet so will be interesting to see how stable the set point is. I suspect if using PID control it will be very stable. Time will tell.
Now one weakness with the thermistor is how it sits in the hole. When I placed mine back I made sure it went in as far as it could.. I could imagine if the temperature is looking a bit suspect an improperly placed thermister could be the reason.
All in all this has all the hallmarks of quite a well-designed heater. Some might say a little over-engineered but I like it.*

Just a quick note:
I am not suggesting this heater meets any safety standards where you live, so if you have any concerns, then look elsewhere. To say otherwise would be way outside the scope of my ability or resources, but what I can say is that it is not a basic unit by any means and they have clearly put some thought in to the design to ensure a level of quality that I'd say exceeds a lot of other Chinese non-branded goods!*

I have personally replaced the power lead as I was not happy with the supplied plug. UK plugs are pretty sturdy and I wanted to use an appropriate fuse so this was a no-brainer for me!
Will be interested to hear how ithers have faired? 


For those interested, some pictures below:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/X13uj5BwJ5tQBhfp6


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## cfranco-p

Sorry 
Double post, please delete.......


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## cfranco-p

Sean W. said:


> Hello all, and welcome to my review of the SunSun Inline heater!
> 
> 
> 
> This particular review will be on the EH-300 Model, which is a 300W heater.
> 
> 
> 
> I am setting up a new tank and was really wanting to get an inline heater to keep the amount of equipment inside the relatively small 20 gallon long tank to a minimum. As far as I knew, the only option that would solve this was the Hydor inline heater, but at around $60 ( $90 at my LFS, that I like to support whenever I can ), I could not justify the cost when I had a perfectly good submersible heater sitting in my aquarium " junk drawer ".
> 
> 
> 
> Searching on ebay, I came across the " External Heater Adjustable 20-35degree for Aquarium Fish Tank ", AKA Sun Sun inline heater. It ships from China and is $26 with free shipping. Note, that there are two different models, the EH-300 and EH-500. As far as I can tell, the EH-500 is only available in a 220-240V model, which wont fly here in North America.
> 
> 
> 
> I tried to find a review or an unboxing or a YouTube video of this heater, but couldnt find anything, so that is why I am writing this.
> 
> 
> 
> Here is a screen shot from the ebay listing, note the ebay item number circled in red.
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> So I figured I would be the guinea pig and order one of these heaters and put it through its paces and let you know what I think. I clicked the buy it now button and two weeks later It arrived in my mail box.
> 
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> Here is the retail packaging
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> Almost all the writing is in Chinese, so Im not entirely sure what it says
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> Here is the otherside
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> This is what comes in the box, the heater itself and three sets of different sized barb fittings. I can confirm that this heater would work with the Eheim 2215 and the SunSun 704, extrapolate from that what you can
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> Here it is installed. pretty simple setup. Since the instructions were in Chinese, I had to figure out how to set the temperature I wanted. I was surprised that the heater was in Fahrenheit and not Celsius, but I just kept pushing the green button until I got it to do what I wanted. Its pretty easy to figure out.
> 
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> I did notice its about 1 degree off from my in tank thermometer, which is easy enough to adjust for.
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> I guess that completes my review... :nerd:
> 
> 
> 
> its a $26 inline heater, that heats your aquarium water... Nothing to write home about and If you need a heater or would like to get a piece of equpiemnt out of the tank, I think this is a solid option.
> 
> 
> 
> I will update this post if it catches on fire and burns down my house :wink2:


Thank for the review, almost 2 years had been past since you placed the review, I would like to ask you how is doing this heater? 

Enviado desde mi SM-G965F mediante Tapatalk


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## [email protected]@

Sean W. said:


> Hello all, and welcome to my review of the SunSun Inline heater!
> 
> This particular review will be on the EH-300 Model, which is a 300W heater.
> 
> I am setting up a new tank and was really wanting to get an inline heater to keep the amount of equipment inside the relatively small 20 gallon long tank to a minimum. As far as I knew, the only option that would solve this was the Hydor inline heater, but at around $60 ( $90 at my LFS, that I like to support whenever I can ), I could not justify the cost when I had a perfectly good submersible heater sitting in my aquarium " junk drawer ".
> 
> Searching on ebay, I came across the " External Heater Adjustable 20-35degree for Aquarium Fish Tank ", AKA Sun Sun inline heater. It ships from China and is $26 with free shipping. Note, that there are two different models, the EH-300 and EH-500. As far as I can tell, the EH-500 is only available in a 220-240V model, which wont fly here in North America.
> 
> Here it is installed. pretty simple setup. Since the instructions were in Chinese, I had to figure out how to set the temperature I wanted. I was surprised that the heater was in Fahrenheit and not Celsius, but I just kept pushing the green button until I got it to do what I wanted. Its pretty easy to figure out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I did notice its about 1 degree off from my in tank thermometer, which is easy enough to adjust for.
> 
> I guess that completes my review... :nerd:
> 
> its a $26 inline heater, that heats your aquarium water... Nothing to write home about and If you need a heater or would like to get a piece of equpiemnt out of the tank, I think this is a solid option.
> 
> I will update this post if it catches on fire and burns down my house :wink2:



Just noticed you have not terminated your tubes properly! You push the pipe on then UNSCREW the ring. This pushes against the lip and thus holds the tube in place


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## Grobbins48

[email protected]@ said:


> Just noticed you have not terminated your tubes properly! You push the pipe on then UNSCREW the ring. This pushes against the lip and thus holds the tube in place


That is a good catch! Hopeful there were no issues with is all this time...

And I know this is an old post, but also am curious as to how well this holds up.


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## Beazley

Also curious as to how it's holding up!


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