Aquatraders.com?

[pumbaafoot]

I recently was looking at aquatraders.com and their low prices caught my eye. Cheap price usually equates to cheap product in my experiences but I would love to be told otherwise in this case. If anyone has any thoughts on the "odyssea" line or aquatraders.com, please chime in. Thanks everyone!

[jav'sreef]

i just ran into that site too they do have really cheap prices on skimmers .....iam also curious

[cheeks69]

Brand check

Lights

[SoliSteve]

My Odyssea came with broken MH's and CF's and half the hardware was missing. It took a month to haggle to get the replacement parts but I did get them. It was a lot of work on my part. The only issue I have with the lights is what I had to do to hook them up to separate timers but the lights do work, the fans work fine - the Customer Service was lacking, to put it mildly.

[BoomerD]

In this hobby, usually, you get about what you pay for...low price = low quality. Aquatraders has a pretty terrible reputation, even in the local San Francisco community.
Poorly built, low quality products,
backed up by little to no warranty,
and poor to non-existant customer service ...

[pumbaafoot]

Thanks for the info everyone. Ill be sure to forget about that site. Thanks again!

[aand6543]

Originally Posted by pumbaafoot

I recently was looking at aquatraders.com and their low prices caught my eye. Cheap price usually equates to cheap product in my experiences but I would love to be told otherwise in this case. If anyone has any thoughts on the "odyssea" line or aquatraders.com, please chime in. Thanks everyone!

I ordered and recieved a 20" metal halide and compact flourescent light fixture with leds 2 years ago. If you have ever heard that the true color intensity (ie 10,00K, 14,000k, or 20,000 k) of a bulb truly is contigent upon the quality of it's ballast? I found this to be true with this fixture. The color was not what it was with the same bulb inserted into another more expensive ballast. Other than the trueness of the bulb it looked well and served my purposes very well. After a year and 1/2 the switch to the leds wore out and I could no longer turn them on. Someone who was comfortable with electrical work could fix that easily. I also ordered and recieved a compact flourescent fixture for my planted tank. As of last week, one of the caps that hold the bulb in has a short in it and works erratically. This fixture is now a little over 11 mos old.

In my opinion, the Oddysea product line is great for a short time. During that short time you can save you money for something long lasting, or just buy a whole new fixture from them when the old one wears out. The aquarium light industry is constantly improving upon itself and makes better models all the time, so to buy cheap and then replace is not such a bad idea. Especially when it comes time to buy new bulbs.

Best of luck!

[NATIVEVAMAN]

According to a guy on another forum he bought a fixture from aquatraders.A mh /t-5 unit.two of the t-5 bulbs were broken and had no markings on them.He had to rewire it to get to work.

[George771177]

i bought a metal halide and power compact fixture from them and everything came to me in good conditions and it works great. i have had the fixture for a little over 2 months and iam happy with the fixture and the service from the business. i guess it must very from customer to customer. the only complaint i have is that thier are four power cords that make for a mess but iam mounting a shelf undernieth my aquarium to take care of that. Maybe i just got lucky but to hell with everyone that is knocking this fixture i dont have boat loads of money laying around and my corals are now thriving under this fixture compared to the 4x65 watt pc's i used to run.

[bhohimer]

I would like to make a comment regarding this thread.....

The person that referred me to aquatraders.com was at my LFS. He has been selling coralife and other fixtures for several years. He, so kindly, informed me that the lights that are sold under the odyssea brand name are manufactured by the same company that manufactures the coralife lights (notice the "exact" similarity in the fixtures)....Has anyone tried to deal with coralife customer support lately?

In summary, my odyssea products have exceeded my expectations. I mean, come on, the same light that sells for $350~ is only $109 without the little rectangluar brand-name plate.

I have a skimmer from there also...PS75 is the model. The powerheads on the skimmer are of what seems to be a slightly inferior quality. I say this only because of the fact that I have recently snapped an impeller shaft during routine cleaning. It's a 250gph unit. Luckily, I can replace the entire pump with strainer, foam, and mounting kit for $12.95.

Anyways......I took a chance and sounds like I lucked out

ps-no broken bulbs upon delivery (4x65pc 2w2b)

[framerguy]

Originally Posted by BoomerD

In this hobby, usually, you get about what you pay for...low price = low quality. Aquatraders has a pretty terrible reputation, even in the local San Francisco community.
Poorly built, low quality products,
backed up by little to no warranty,
and poor to non-existant customer service ...

I would just like to back up this post as it reflects my own experience with them. They couldn't even be bothered to pick up their phone or answer emails...I gave up trying which is what they were hoping for. The light I got from them worked for three weeks.