asonitez
Floodicus Maximus Flooris
As a Reefer on A budget my disposable income is VERY limited with what I can do. With Every Hobby I get into which has been quite a few it would seem that there are always the practical and impractical participants of said hobby. Lately I have seen various discussions and questions that were asked about AquaTraders Lights where the replys would simply be.. "oh thats so cheap. then it must be a giant pos or will kill you and your family while you sleep." People are equating cost to quality without ever justifying it. When I was into RC car's I used stock parts, very few upgrades, stock Tx/Rx and still consistently took home 1st place trophies from the majority of my races. I was willing to utilize what I had to the best of my ability and my efforts were rewarded. Likewise it would be at those same meets that other racers would invest thousands into their vehicles and while they had considerable skill, all the best equip in the world did not help them as their cars were pushed to the limits of convention and they would ultimately have to rely on skill and maintenence to hope for a win.
Lately I've had the pleasure of visiting quite a few different homes of various reefers in and outside of jersey. Of course the mandatory "tank viewing" was always a focal point of the visit as well as the life support system that made it all tick. Too many times Have I seen tanks that took a practical approach with incredible results and tanks that had a skimmer designed for 10x their tanks size, wave makers and powerheads that seemingly took up an entire tank wall by themselves, and other equip that was inherently completely un-necessary for that particular tank. Their owners would BOAST about the costs associated with each piece of equip and frankly seeing the equip in ACTION IRL completely turned me off of ever using it.
Such was the case of Aqua-traders items. As I inherently started round-robbin checking LFS's up and down the Jersey State I started noticing that almost 90% of them utilized knock-off, non name brand, extremely simplistic lighting systems, filtration systems, uv-sterilizers, ozone generators etc with incredible results. Having the opportunity to sit down to dinner with the OWNER of a LFS for over 58 years he simply told me that no matter what the bloody hell I bought for my fish tank that NOTHING will do for me what WATER CHANGES and Maintenence on moving parts would. He told me how over the years technology took over everything and now he barely carries any synthetic products designed to remove algae, heal ich, clear water, accelerate coraline, and miracle cures. He told me straight that he used all of his products and if they did nothing for him he simply did not carry it any more. He told me that the majority of the products sold today are to try and extend the period between water changes, buffer the system to a point where it could self sustain and frankly none of it worked because there are so many things that we can't test for that will be solved with a water change and maintence on moving parts/inert surfaces. He has traveled all parts of the world and collected his own Cichlids from Tangynika and Malawai, as well as dive and recover his own anthias and tangs for his own tanks. Some of his livestock has been with him for over 20 years and he could recall the day that he acquired said species from a school of fish for his own tank.
The short and tall of this is that You don't NEED to spend ridiculous amounts of money on items toted as "quality" based on the already predisposed positions of people that bought said item because of others predisposed ideal of that becasue its expensive and totes a snazzy logo it must be the holy grail of that class of items. In my own personal experience to name a few
A New Airstone in a LEE AIR driven skimmer of appropriate size out Performs a Tunze Nano and DOC 9010.
My Odyssea(Aquatraders) 24" 36" and 48" halide fixtures after replacing the bulbs to get the color I desired
is still ticking 1 year later when for my fathers 48" Coralife- Current Orbit- Hamilton Tech and Aqua all changed within a year have A) Ceased to Function B) Burned out Ballasts C) Proved too costly to fix or replace parts D) Just proved to be a waste of money because the hype generated about that product was all unfounded fanboys looking for a reason to stroke their visa e-(sinep) spell it backward....
Ppl are amazed to this day that all my rocks are purple and I've never dosed Purple-Up or any coralline booster.
My corals have grown and spawned and grown and remained healthy through water changes and normal feeding of an ebay cheapo phyto supplement.
My SPS few though they are have shown continued growth with only water changes weekly and small doses of kalk etc when I remember. No calcium reactors needed, CO2 canisters. I keep my phosphates down with water changes and a ball of micro algae in a eggcrate case right before my return to my fish tank. No expensive reactors or media to purchase.
I use a Aqua-Euro USA 250 skimmer that I got for 216 dollars shipped and it is pulling out more gunk that I can keep up with changing/emptying the skimmate daily. Just because something is expensive dosen't mean its quality. It just means the manufacturer needs to sell it at that price to make a profit marginal to their costs. The fact that something appears better because its expensive is an ideal spurred on by the media and consumerists that continually feed the merchants that take advantage of the fact that the media is holding their item in such accord that it must be the "bently" of that particualar item. I bet if you all found out that All the movie stars and rich folk used odyssea fixtures in their multi-million dollar homes you would definately re-c0nsider. In either case reefers will continually to hold the words of other reefers as law or go with the majority. Few will actually attempt to break tradition and experience something on their own. But its prudent to know that it was the people that broke tradition, tried things for themselves and challenged the validity of manufacturer claims that have gone on to do great things and pioneer new advances in the hobby. Don't knock the Aquatraders unit until you try it.
-Aso
Lately I've had the pleasure of visiting quite a few different homes of various reefers in and outside of jersey. Of course the mandatory "tank viewing" was always a focal point of the visit as well as the life support system that made it all tick. Too many times Have I seen tanks that took a practical approach with incredible results and tanks that had a skimmer designed for 10x their tanks size, wave makers and powerheads that seemingly took up an entire tank wall by themselves, and other equip that was inherently completely un-necessary for that particular tank. Their owners would BOAST about the costs associated with each piece of equip and frankly seeing the equip in ACTION IRL completely turned me off of ever using it.
Such was the case of Aqua-traders items. As I inherently started round-robbin checking LFS's up and down the Jersey State I started noticing that almost 90% of them utilized knock-off, non name brand, extremely simplistic lighting systems, filtration systems, uv-sterilizers, ozone generators etc with incredible results. Having the opportunity to sit down to dinner with the OWNER of a LFS for over 58 years he simply told me that no matter what the bloody hell I bought for my fish tank that NOTHING will do for me what WATER CHANGES and Maintenence on moving parts would. He told me how over the years technology took over everything and now he barely carries any synthetic products designed to remove algae, heal ich, clear water, accelerate coraline, and miracle cures. He told me straight that he used all of his products and if they did nothing for him he simply did not carry it any more. He told me that the majority of the products sold today are to try and extend the period between water changes, buffer the system to a point where it could self sustain and frankly none of it worked because there are so many things that we can't test for that will be solved with a water change and maintence on moving parts/inert surfaces. He has traveled all parts of the world and collected his own Cichlids from Tangynika and Malawai, as well as dive and recover his own anthias and tangs for his own tanks. Some of his livestock has been with him for over 20 years and he could recall the day that he acquired said species from a school of fish for his own tank.
The short and tall of this is that You don't NEED to spend ridiculous amounts of money on items toted as "quality" based on the already predisposed positions of people that bought said item because of others predisposed ideal of that becasue its expensive and totes a snazzy logo it must be the holy grail of that class of items. In my own personal experience to name a few
A New Airstone in a LEE AIR driven skimmer of appropriate size out Performs a Tunze Nano and DOC 9010.
My Odyssea(Aquatraders) 24" 36" and 48" halide fixtures after replacing the bulbs to get the color I desired
is still ticking 1 year later when for my fathers 48" Coralife- Current Orbit- Hamilton Tech and Aqua all changed within a year have A) Ceased to Function B) Burned out Ballasts C) Proved too costly to fix or replace parts D) Just proved to be a waste of money because the hype generated about that product was all unfounded fanboys looking for a reason to stroke their visa e-(sinep) spell it backward....
Ppl are amazed to this day that all my rocks are purple and I've never dosed Purple-Up or any coralline booster.
My corals have grown and spawned and grown and remained healthy through water changes and normal feeding of an ebay cheapo phyto supplement.
My SPS few though they are have shown continued growth with only water changes weekly and small doses of kalk etc when I remember. No calcium reactors needed, CO2 canisters. I keep my phosphates down with water changes and a ball of micro algae in a eggcrate case right before my return to my fish tank. No expensive reactors or media to purchase.
I use a Aqua-Euro USA 250 skimmer that I got for 216 dollars shipped and it is pulling out more gunk that I can keep up with changing/emptying the skimmate daily. Just because something is expensive dosen't mean its quality. It just means the manufacturer needs to sell it at that price to make a profit marginal to their costs. The fact that something appears better because its expensive is an ideal spurred on by the media and consumerists that continually feed the merchants that take advantage of the fact that the media is holding their item in such accord that it must be the "bently" of that particualar item. I bet if you all found out that All the movie stars and rich folk used odyssea fixtures in their multi-million dollar homes you would definately re-c0nsider. In either case reefers will continually to hold the words of other reefers as law or go with the majority. Few will actually attempt to break tradition and experience something on their own. But its prudent to know that it was the people that broke tradition, tried things for themselves and challenged the validity of manufacturer claims that have gone on to do great things and pioneer new advances in the hobby. Don't knock the Aquatraders unit until you try it.
-Aso
