Mike, I'm with you brother. I'm running 1500 watts on 5 heaters right now. They ran constantly to keep 78 deg over the past few months. I was thinking about going with a 1000w myself, but didn't want to do that unless I had a controller I trusted. I was worried if a "big" one got stuck on, I would overheat the tanks. So I went with a 500w titanium as my largest. Still could use a controller, but just my .02