You can forget about future upgrades on the Illumina, at least not in a cost effective manner. Did you see how much the main pads cost. Upgrading all the pads is like buying a brand new fixture.
I have a 260 and thought the same, I was actually a little ticked about this so I emailed them and the response was:
Dear Dave,
The parts are available globally for repair just in case of a mishap for example dropping the fixture in water….
We make these parts available globally since we would want our customers to have fast access to parts should they need it in such cases mentioned.
Since the fault ratio of the pads since launch of the platform in 2009 has been close to zero. Our dealers bear the cost of stocking these and carrying inventory of a part that might never sell, hence the higher pricing.
These prices do not reflect what the cost to upgrade would be. At the moment we have not had many requests to upgrade. This is simply because even the SR200 is more than what any reef would require. In most cases people are turning all channels down anywhere from 50 to 80%.
The main reason for increasing the power are as follow:
1- New XTE platform while more advanced and superior in many fronts is cheaper so we can maintain the pricing while increasing the power.
2- The stronger fixture can penetrate more depth for anyone that might possibly run the fixture on deeper tanks in their current and or future set up. Specially in EU we are seeing a new trend of deeper aquaria.
3- You can run the fixture at lower power and save energy. Her at Vertex being a German company we are always conscious about our product’s power consumption both for monetery and Carbon footprint reduction purposes.
We are planing to offer an Upgrade program in the near future. This will not be launched until the new year but its already in the work at the marketing department. We just have to overcome the logistical challenges of “factory-direct” so we can offer the best prices and availability to all our customers globally.
Best Regards,
Vertex Aquaristik Support