Deanos said:Unfortunately, this seems to be the general consensus on the RC thread I linked :irked:
Can you explain it to me? :scratch:
As I stated above, I had did some trades with the owner of TAAM (Asian reefer too :lol2:, very nice guy) few time while I lived out in Cali. I ended up bring in some of my old Rios to him for exchange and got to talking to him about his products. Bottom line, you have people walking into stores that wants a tank with all the equipment for a reasonable price, they don't know the hobby but knows spending $150 for a in sump return pump(Eheim 1260 at LFS retail price) is too much when the store carries one for $75 that "supposedly" is as good. They can certainly make one that is really as good as an Eheim (better manufacturing tolerance and material, since the design can be easily and cheaply copied) but that means marketing the better Rio for $100. He does not want to be in that market since there are significant less people in the hobby that requires that kind of longevity. Another issue the mark up on the higher end equipment in our hobby is a lot less then the lower end, LFS does not want to carry high priced inventory to sell less of them and make less money down the road.
BTW, I had some design inputs into the Seio while it was still in developmental phase at his "lab", he didn't take most of them.