ati,giesman scams?

ATI bulb are far superior to generic, they produce more par and much better color...price difference of 4$ a bulb is worth it for sure

 

agree with above. +1

 

Very few aquatic companies make bulbs. Some companies contract out to a company that makes bulbs to create a bulb to their specs then slape their name on it. Other companies take don't even go that far and just find the cheapest company that already buils a bulb and just relabels it. Both ATI and Geisemann are in Germany and have been know to contract the same company to build their bulbs. It's not like there are an abundance of T5 manufactures in Germany. Although they may have similar spectrums, there are often times slight differences that a user may notice while other diferences may only be noticed to a spectrograph or intensity measuring devices. The aquatic business is not unlike the tech business in the way they share technology. These aquatic companies go to suppliers for the items that they do not directly build to complete their product line. For example, Apple goes to samsung for many of the parts to build their iphone. So much that they may purchase more parts from samsung than samsung uses to build their own phones.

 

There more that I think of it, I don't know of any aquatic companies that make their own bulbs. The exception is there are a few lighting companies that make lighting that happen to make bulbs for our hobby too but even then, most of those bulbs were actually designed for other uses. Our hobby is just way too small to invest that type of capital into manufacturing when there is an expert out there who can do it cheaper and with higher quality.

 

I've tried lots of different T5 bulbs from different manufacturers over the last 3 years, infact I have a box with about 30 bulbs sitting in my basement, from geisman, ATI, Current, UVL, KZ and some other cheaper no-name brands but even the ATI, KZ and Geisman bulbs were only a few $$ above the cheaper brands....you're shopping at the wrong place if you're paying $40/bulb.

I like the ATI and KZ bulbs for coral growth and color and brightness.

 

yeah i really think i just needed to find a good vendor foster and smith seems like more of a corp. vendor the prices speak for themselves