If nobody has mentioned it yet, the istick 20w is over powered. It fires a almost a full volt higher than what the display says. So even set at the lowest setting it may still be too much for the nova to handle. I can't use mine on anything less than the nautilus. Luckily this problem was fixed for the 30w and 50w versions of the device. Seems like nobody ever mentions the fact that the 20w fires way too hot for most beginner setups and just sells the thing then everyone tries to figure out why everything tastes like melted computer parts. The nova is an older tank so I'm assuming that the problem is the overload on power. Hope I could help a bit.