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:

I really don't know why those that have never tried LEDs keep posting on the topic. They blurt out all these "facts" that those of us that actually have experience with have to correct. I read or heard this means nothing.

Haha. Yeah. Now I need to spend $2000 on ac to get rid of the chiller ;)

I run a single 250w halide over my tank. While I do have fans. They have yet to turn on. While brad for example still needed his chiller with t5.

I know what your saying with profit margins on led. I recently had comversation with lfs in this. It makes it hard to make money with such small profits.

Reality is. I like halide. I'm sure I will also like led in the future. Other than operating cost. It will take 9 years of bulb replacements to cost the price of a mitras. And after that 9 years I'll buy a 2nd hand mitras for $300. Proven. Look at gen 1 radions

As for operating cost. If we really cared then things like A/C, hot tubs and personal work shops would all half to go. My hottub runs me $70ish a month. Do I use it enough to justify that? Probably not. But I haven't ****ed and moan about that yet

Well when you are paying $1000 for a fixture, you would love to have fancy boxes. One thing that I did notice is that european brands don't pay much attention to boxes while american manufactures put their things in awesome boxes. Tunze pumps vs vortec pumps. Salinity salt box vs H2Ocean salt box; mitra's box vs radion's box. :lol:

Oh don't worry about that...I love debates :smile:

Haha. I was waiting for that

LOL as I said I am tired ;) You win that argument on the heater ;) HOWEVER a chiller can (not always) cost more to run than a heater, so the MH will still cost more based on that.

Bill I haven't posted anything about performance of LED over here. I am talking about cost-benefit and electricity; something that can be judged from the manuals and numbers and doesn't need any sort of experience.

Ditto for me. I was about to buy either the Mitras or the new hybrid t5/led for my new 3ft 50g......but figured for half the price the 2080 will do just fine. Well thats the plan at least. Im fascinated by the 3ft hybrid but not at $1500

Crap I guess My cheap low end radion pros at 915$ times two was the cause I shoulda went high end?

I went back to t5 as well after a long battle with coral long term health switch to t5 was instant results that's hard to ignore Considering the time I spent and the money on different generations

Sps wise I was at my end and constant tweaking of.my system wasn't getting answers

Since the switch back to t5 all is well again ......

Yeah I figured it would be 2000$ minimum for the Mitras or radions. And with a 3 year warranty on the ever grow they must be confident in the product they are putting out.

Also the built in programmer and full spectrum claims really tweaked my interest.

I read a few reviews about the evergrow and all seemed to be happy to downright impressed.

Should also state I'm not going real hard towards sps. A few pieces for sure but mostly lps

I probably should know better than to wade into this debate. But I used to have T5's and now run Radion LEDs, so my experience might be relevant.

I should first mention that I now have two 6' tanks with closed canopies (vented) and covered tanks. Initially I had one tank with T5s. There was a lot of heat produced by these, and the chiller (1/3 HP model, ran for about 8 hours a day, both summer and winter. I am quite sure that even the room was heated up by these during the day. But at night the tank cooled down and the heater would kick in usually about 6 AM and cycle on and off for about 3 hours, until the lights were on for a while.

Then I replaced the T5s with Radions. Shortly after I also added a second 6 foot tank also covered, and with canopies and Radions. I now have two 6 foot tanks running off one sump, so the heater and chiller are for both tanks. What's interesting is that the heater still only runs about 3 hours on and off, same as before when I had one tank with T5s. But my chiller which now has to cool 2 tanks only runs about 3 hours a day, starting just before my LEDs peak for the day.

So, for me, I believe there is a huge power saving. And there is very little heat vented into the room now, from my canopies.

I have the smaller evergrow on my 20g and my sps doing just dandy. Thus my interest in the larger, better model. The only other choice would be just t-5s, like the 36in. 6 bulb sunpower.I keep peeking at it.:lol:

As mine will be open top........heat is not an issue

I was always happy with t5 for sure. But as my previous post states, with 14 bulbs it's just waaaay expensive lol

I'm expecting my evergrow in a couple days so I will definitely post my thoughts on it.

Brad, congrats in making the change! I'll have to come over soon to see the tank under only t5s. I'm still researching and waiting for some technology being perfected with the t5s ( dimming etc...) before I will make the plunge however at this time, the mitras are as close to t5s it's gonna get at this time for me ( please keep in mind that this is my opinion based on how my eyes react to the lighting the mitras put out).

I am keeping a close eye on them ati hybrids... I see that there are some nice tanks that had recently changed over to the t5 hybrids from LEDs which includes the mitras.

dayum this thread is hawt hawt fire!!!:D iam glad iam batting for both led and t5....yaaaah!!!

I know one thing. Brad knows what he,s doing with sps. Look back at his previous tank. :D. Sheez, even the 6 bulb plus bulbs is big $$$$$. I know cause Im pricing. :lol:

Waiting on my ATI Hybrid to be delivered - just thought I'd throw it out there 🎃

Will you please do a review of that beast? :mrgreen: No one in this forum seems to have done it till date. Would be really interesting to see one over here instead of going over to youtube to see the same dimming and flashing effects without any insights and helpful comments.

Ya know, if I were to jump in now, I might look at the hybrids. I do like the features of LED, with the color from T5. And I could buy a fixture today for what I paid for the AIs. And with the money I lost selling them, there were no cost savings to be seen -lol
Also, just an observation with my corals, I notice my green milli now has gold tones, which it never had, even under my MH... And this fixture, with new bulbs, is probably 40% brighter than the loaner unit I was using. I may have found a new favorite light.

Sure Will - the Madjelly Boys have been running them for awhile - maybe we can get them to post their thoughts on the Hybrid., in another thread of course, Poor Brads thread has been beaten up and taken over.

There will be a few of us here in Calgary receiving the Hybrid pretty soon - you will be able to see one on display at one of your favourite stores pretty soon

Awesome :mrgreen:

Yah. I should apologize to Brad for ruining his thread. Sorry Brad :cry:

Brad just to give you a tease of what you can achieve with full t5 , this is one of the tanks that made me a t5liever. P.S iam now selling his secret bulb combination!!!:D

This is one of my reefin buddy tanks aka FlagSwipe !!!!
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ps530952a5.jpg

How do you justify the cost of the hydrid?

We not wrecking his thread. This is a very kool, {no pun intended}, lighting thread.

Looks like mine except with baby corals :razz:

So let's hear about the secret bulb combo!!

The hybrid is about what I paid for my AI's, so I think fair, if the coverage is there.

And ya, have at it in this thread, it's just meant to spur discussion on people moving away from LED to various other technologies.

I just dont see the purpose of Hybrids. T5 on their own for years have been a leading source for some of the worlds best tanks, so other than some tweak-able moonlight and shimmer what is the point?

Either be one or the other, but that's my own feeling.

Here ill give you a breakdown of our thoughts at the time.
i got my 4ft hybrid fixture for less then $2000
brand new 4ft 6bulb ati fixture + reefbrite(2) $1500 ish
brand new "highend" led fixture would cost me $1800-2000 ish

So if you take that into consideration ati hybrid fixture is not that ridiculously expensive vs other brands. We love our ati hybrid because its the best of both worlds!

These are the 2 features i miss with LED, so if I can supplement them without too much trouble, it would be nice to have those features back. The hybrids give you that, although there may be a loss in available T5 to make room for the LEDs.
I would like a 4' strip that is controllable via my Apex. For not a lot of money. lol

I personally dont like the general tank look of a pure t5ho tank. But the corals coloration are great! I was going to go with the power module and add 2 reef brights for the shimmer and pop which I like the look of. After the cost of a power module and 2 reef brights you are up there already.
At the end of the day i paid a little premium to get the ati hybrid to have a nice complete package hanging on top of my tank.
From my experience with leds, watt for watt they grow my sps great, dare I say better than t5ho alone. But colouration is lacking in the sps. So the white led on my hybrids can provide the muscle to grow my corals so i can pack the lights with blue plus and purple plus bulbs to obtain the colours in the coral.
Cost to run T5ho is negligible to me because when i purchase specific coral for top $ it frustrates me that i cannot obtain the colouration that i bought it for.
So to sum it up the hybrids to me... Offer a compact neat package that offers leds growth advantage, with the t5ho colouration advantage and the shimmer and pop the blue/ royal blues offer.

I think this thread is awesome, one of the main reasons we keep a reef tank is due to the crazy colours we get to see in our tanks. So picking a fixture that works for YOU in your own unique SITUATION (tank size, what corals you own, cost running, cost for initial purchase etc) is very important.
IMO theres no perfect fixture out there, you just gatta weigh the pros and cons for each one and see which one offers more pros to you.

Agreed. But your adding led,s. Im comparing with just the 6 bulb sunpower. No shimmer, but good growth and colour

Ok nevermind. Just seen your next post..:D

I believe the Hybrid fixture was built for the Hard Core SPS Guy - obviously can be used with a mixed reef also - but for us SPS freaks that spend thousands of dollars on High end SPS, we want to see that color and growth , as mentioned above, The Led provides that extra punch for growth, gives you that shimmer effect that we Halide users love, t5's provide that uniform coverage and color.