Ok sorry this makes no sense, MH pump out stacks of heat to the degree you need a chiller or cooling fans, with LED the heat is minimal and they have built in fans. I dont have either on my tank. If I had MH I would need one or the other.

we all know the sunglasses are just a gimmick bit of fun i dont see how that has any relevance ;) The packaging has also no reflection on the units ability to perform. So you are saying your purchasing choices are made based on a glossy box. Great news the GHL now has a glossy box ;)

In regards to the price, its the technology you are buying, its up to the consumer if they wish to take that leap to the next level.

Dont take my reply the wrong way, just having a bit of light hearted banter with you on a Sunday evening.

I would love to see a statistics about how many people with LED don't need to run chiller anymore who used to run it before. BC would be a great place to start ;)

To my mind, if someone needed chiller while using MH, they would still need chiller if they are running LED. That's because most of the chiller users have the ambient temperature higher than favorable for the tank (unless their ambient is sitting around, say 80; in that case they won't need chiller). MH just makes it worse while LED doesn't; but in the end, they still need to run the chiller. Maybe less, but it will be there.

In the end, electricity is dirt cheap. Even if the LED eliminates chiller, the total cost benefit will probably come down by a month or so.

In the end, the whole cost thing, like i keep on saying, is just a hype. LED has its benefits and bells and whistles but no one can justify me the "less cost" thing. When costs come, I want to look at the cost-benefit return; not just a tagline of "hey you won't need to replace bulbs". Cause I am paying which is equivalent to 7 years worth of bulb replacement. That's a lot of time.....and electricity is dirt cheap :)

Gettin deep in here

I would guess that mitras and radion pros are both built for less than $300

Definitely. Big names have a HUGE profit margin. They justify that through customer service, warranty, R&D, packaging and marketing. If Radion was to be marketed through places like...alibaba....it's cost would have come down by around 50% :razz: Marketing is a big thing and cost for big names. Michael will be able to comment on that :smile:

I personally don't have the liquid cash to throw at high end led fixtures so I have opted to go with a midrange fixture. (ever grow 2080). Now I have only ordered the fixture last week so I still don't have it to say if I like the lighting or not but I had to factor cost into the equation.

My current fixture is a 14 bulb t5 fixture over a 180gallon tank. This means that at approx 20$ or more a bulb it costs me around 300$ to do a bulb change. It also means that when I turn on my lights it's drawing just under 560 watts. With this in mind I bought the led fixture.

I was due for a bulb change - 300$
Led fixture comes with a 3 year warranty
In that 3 year period I will have to do basically 3 more bulb changes 900$ more
So by the time my warranty is up I will have saved 1200$ in bulbs not to mention about 200 watts per hour running. So roughly 2 KwH per day.
Being that the 2 fixtures needed to cover my tank will only cost me 1000$ it was a risk I had to take.

Yep i will with complete openness, my GROSS profit for a Mitras right now is $63 and thats gross not taking into account the above mentioned cost of marketing, etc etc. Dealer margins for LED is typically 30-40% ( dealers have high overheads, shop rents mouths to feed, this is an industry expected % for dry goods) for a dealer to sell a Mitras sadly their margin is far less than that and why we help them by drop shipping most so they do not have to cut into their own profits.

My last shipment cost me more the Euro has gone up by 200 base points in 3 weeks.

Now thats 100% openness

GHL took 2 years to develop the Mitras with a leading lighting lab, look at the build quality, look at the fans all UL certified. These things come at a price, i can assure you the Mitras taking into account all tooling and cost of labour comes in above $300, the power supply alone is $45 cost price!

Again simple reply, set your house AC to 71F and thats that, no extenal heat source to raise the tank temp

I live in Ontario we have sky high temps in the summer and I have no chiller or fan on my tank. No need, the AC does that for me and the LED gives off no heat.

Check out my build on my forum, no fans and no chiller. We had over 90F regularly in ottawa this year.

You would have to have the AC irrespective of whether you are running LED or MH. If you set 71F at the AC, the tank temp without light/heater will hover around that. With MH, it will probably raise the temp by 10F max (if the lamps are raising more, you are probably keeping the lamps too close to the water). So your tank will eventually sit around 80F to 82F. With LED, your tank will need heater to get that up.

And with AC running, you won't need chiller isinit? Unless you are running like 400w MH over a 12sq. inch surface area. (some of these numbers are vague and just came from my mind; please do correct me if I am wrong).

Yes you are right but you are now running round in circles the original point you made was LED heated up a tank more than MH, that simply is not the case, in fact impossible. the LED unit would melt, the LEDS would be so inefficient due to the heat.

In your first post you said an LED heats the tank more now its "you need a heater to get it up there" bit tired did I miss read something?

So yes if you run MH you need a chiller even if you have AC, with LED you dont as they are putting no heat into the tank.

again not arguing just a friendly debate (no emotion to bloody words on a page)

Where did I write that? :surprise:

What I wrote was: