ATI Purple Plus with comparison pic

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How is AquaCave.com on S&H? Quality I mean, not price.

 

Haven't had them ship bulbs, S&H is $4.95. You must ship at least 2 T5 bulbs to get this rate.

 

Nothing beats reefgeeks.com's shipping. If they carry the bulbs you want, buy from them.

 

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Bulk Reef Supply carries all the same bulbs as ReefGeeks except for the GE bulbs. Giesemann has day-light bulbs though, so no problem, and I trust Giesemann bulbs over GE bulbs. If you are smart enough to get in on a group buy at BRS, or have been in one, then their prices beat ReefGeeks. Otherwise they are the same. I just priced 4 ATI bulbs from each (2 Blue + 2 Aquablue specials as they are the most commonly used ones) and Reefgeeks was $90.75 and BRS was $88.19. Those prices include shipping. That was just the pricing from being a preferred member (permanent discount after participating in a group buy). If you were buying them as part of a group buy, then the price is even cheaper. All of their bulbs are the same price, or cheaper than ReefGeeks. Aquacave beats both of them. They were $86.75 for the same 4 bulbs shipped. I guess it comes down to personal preference, and whether or not you can get additional discounts (such as BRS group buy option which brought the price down to $84.19- beating them all).

 

Based off these charts, doesn't it look like the kz is superior to the ati?

ATI Purple Plus Spectrum


KZ Fiji Purple

 

Those graphs are so hard to tell. I am guessing they will be comparable given the known PAR readings for the Fiji Purple and the ATI Blue Plus. The Purple Plus is the ATI Blue Plus with red spectrum added. The ATI Blue Plus has a higher PAR than the Fiji by 12%. You will also be looking at an $8 difference in price. The ATI will be the cheaper bulb.

 

I would take the GE over the Geisemann for a planted tank any day. Higher PAR and half the price. However I would not use the GE and Geisemann daylight bulbs on a reef tank. Their spectrums have been associated with color fading and excessive zooxanthellae growth. I have first hand experience with the GE. And have read about both the Geisemann 6000K and 11000K doing the same.

 

The measurement unit between the two graphs look to be different as well.

The ATI graph is measuring wavelength against relative intensity vs wavelength against Normalized Spectral Power (W/nm per 1,000 lm) for the Fiji Purple??

I don't know the relationship between those two units of measure. They could be exactly the same for all I know. But I see a 450nm peak topping out at .3 on that ATI graph and .09 at 430nm on the KZ graph. Not sure if there's a conversion or, but at first glance though, just comparing the peaks on the two graphs looks to be misleading IMO.