[Canadian]

Originally Posted by Ron99

+1 to what Steve said above. That info from Coral Sky may be slightly biased as they are obviously marketing a product without optics. As Steve said the cost of the optics is small and they help with concentrating the light so you get better PAR deeper in the tank.

As for the patent, I think all it needs is to be challenged in court and invalidated. I can't see how that patent was issued as they found nothing new or revolutionary or surprising that merits patentability. There was also a bunch of prior art that the patent examiners obviously didn't see. PFO was in financial difficulty before Orbitec went after them so they obviously didn't have the finances to fight it out in court. Hopefully somebody can do that at some point.

If optics are inexpensive why do you think a company would produce a fixture without them? They obviously have reason to believe that not having them provides some type of performance benefit. I believe the new Vertex LED fixture also lacks optics. So there are obviously some companies performing some R&D that leads them to believe LEDs without optics provides a performance, efficiency, or cost advantage. The application of LED technology is still in its infancy in this hobby. Over time I guess we'll see how things pan out. It wasn't that long ago that MH reflectors were designed with the intent of focusing the light and we got to a point where fixtures were producing fairly acute hot spots. Then reflector design transitioned to providing an even spread of light without hot spots.