odyssea lighting systems ?

I looking at purchasing a new lighting system for my 110g tank. I need a 4ft light and found this one. Had anyone had experience with this brand or light?

Odyssea Metal Halide System

 

This is the only fixture i have seen good reviews on..I never had personal expeirence with them but people on here have asked this same question. They say you would need to get new bulbs, and a new ballast...

Odyssea is a cheap lighting company basically..Not great quality IMO, but some people like their MH lighting.

 

I'm looking at that same fixture. Spent the better part of yesterday reading up on it as much as I could. Seems really hit or miss as far as people being happy with it. The ballasts they use only put out 150w or something like that to the bulbs so they are a little underpowered. But if you have a little know how:

Fix your Odyssea 250W Ballast for less than $15! - Nano-Reef.com Forums

Also one thing that seemed to happen was the capacitor burning up on the ballasts, and not after a long time but like a week. So people would end up changing a ballast or something. Also as stated by the post above a lot of people simply upgrade them for the heck of it, or when they do their first bulb change and swap out the ballasts/bulbs for higher quality ones.

There were quite a few people that were happy with the fixture and had experienced no problems.

In general it seemed agreed that the bulbs are lower quality, as are the ballasts. That you have a chance to get a random problem from bad assembly. Read a lot of those, like a bad switch or a wire not even being connected, but most got resolved through Aquatraders or a few people just fixed it themselves.

If you are pretty handy at fixing things that would probably be a plus when deciding whether or not to get this. If you really don't want to deal with any issues, may want to save a little more and get a higher quality one.

(sorry a lot of typing just trying to some up a day of reading.)

A lot of people will just say to buy the more expensive, but I did read about quite a few people that were happy with it and I'm pretty handy with electronics so I think I'll get one of these and cross my fingers.

Hope this helps.

 

+1 on the karma for helping

Yah, I'm handy and could fix problems with the unit if they came up. Do you think it might be better just to build a lighting system from scratch?

 

you can definitely piece on together by buying parts individually or a retrofit kit.

 

I bought the 250 x 2 MH and 54W x 4 T5HO fixture. A lot of people say to just by a better set up. But I bought it knowing the ballast and bulbs aren't that great with the intent of adding the particular ballast and bulbs I wanted. I added icecaps and phoenix 14K a few months after getting the odyssea. From what I read the newer black ballast that come with it are putting out full power. I didn't notice a huge difference with the icecaps, but I wanted long term reliability. Changing bulbs made a big difference. Only problem so far is one of the T5 ballast just quit. For me I basically bought it for the convience of having the MH, T5 and moons all in one decent looking fixture instead of piecing things together. I'm satisfied.

 

Ok thanks. I think i will try it out. What kind of corals are you trying to grow? Are they doing well?

 

Srry did not read any of the posts as I was in a hurry. I have one of these ballests they are great had it for a few months works wonderful. The one problem they have is that they are cheap and that I think was good and bad. The reason I Say bad is becuase im kinda skeptical of the MH bulb that is in there and am thinking of replacing it. My main guy at the LFS by me said that it might be good but it might lose its Kelvin range sooner due to it being a $9.99 bulb so might want to think about just changing it right away or maybe buy a spare to sit there with it. Other than that great buy!

 

I got a mix, mostly soft corals. But the 250w 14k on my 24" deep tank is enough for pretty much anything. Everything seems to be growing well.

 

Awesome, good to hear

+1 for sharing, good to hear from people with first hand experience.