250w coralife metal halides

we have a friend that recommends these new coralife 250w halide lights. My question is, are they worth the near thousand bucks for them? its for a 5 ft tank roughly 2ft deep. they use the light at the store we frequent and it seems to work great. they have em on their live rock tub and a couple coral tanks. we couldnt really find any reviews though.

 

well, since the last post I have looked into a 48 inch icecap metal halides reef illuminations. comprised of 2 250w halides, t5 and leds. for 799.95. we want to spend roughly 1200 max (give or take) thing is we dont want to make an expensive mistake. this is a huge purchase for us and all help would be greatly appreciated. some top five rated light fixtures would help give us some ideas.

 

i would pick icecap over coralife, icecap has tons of positive reviews..i dont know much about coralifes new products since they switched oweners but i use their salt and love it over reef crystals..i think coralife has gotten back on the right track since the new owners or management or whatever it was, but the company changed completely

 

so is there a big difference between halides with different manufacturers? or are all 250 w halides universal?

 

well as far as what components you get are the same(reflector, ballast, bulb) or the fixtures with leds and t5s combos..but icecap ballasts are some of the best if not the best..i havent heard anything about coralifes new ballast are anything so i can say about it..is your fishstore trying to get you to buy that coralife because that is who they carry..if it was like a 50$ fixture it would be different getting coralife,,but throwing down 1200 or under for a fixture i would get either ice cap..im not sure if tek and ati build halide fixtures but they make some bad a$$ t5 fixtures for that price tag..

 

The store we shop at sells them and a couple other name brand products such as marineland. We have seen them in action because they use them on their tanks. but thats the thing, we know they work well but for the price we wonder if theres better out there. on that note too, we do like the fact that it has several fans built into it and its sleak design.