LED Lighting - DIY vs Premade Fixtures

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I don't think you can compare Radions or Vertex to a DIY. Radions are nice.... but they're like a buying a Ferrari to pick up groceries with.

You can get AI SOL's, $2500 for a 6' tank up to 30" wide, 6 units, lots of power.

People argue about how there's better bulbs out etc... but at some point there is a light that works, people can't say that you need the "best" light available to grow corals. If you apply that logic to halides we'd be using 1000W street lights on our tanks and nuke everything in there.

Don't get me wrong, i love DIY stuff, i've got 200+ hours into an arduino controller that's saved me $200 maybe, that's a pretty crappy hourly rate.

Just saying that in this argument of cost efficiency of a DIY, there are premades that will be worth it once you factor in what happens if you overload a couple bulbs, or screw up a solder, etc. And in the end, your time is worth something, so unless you enjoy the time spent on a DIY, you're not saving too much.