GHL Ion Director Review - Part 1 

The evolution of reef-tech is so awesome, I'm sure so many people are super excited for this piece of kit.

Enjoyed the honest review Sam. Can't say i'm inspired to get a device this complicated to set up, no matter how much convenience it provides...

Love you're vidoes mate and I love how you always make time for your fans and get back to us I don't know how you donit but you do keep up the good work❤️

Love the long videos bro, always.

Wooooffff I did not expect the set up and results to be so convoluted!

Connecting the GHL to the internet I think is like giving birth. Endless pain and suffering, a final push, and suddenly - there they are. And then you forget all the suffering you went through and you become a big time GHL fan boy!! Whatever you do not change routers - ever! Also - I am glad someone is FINALLY doing an actual soup to nuts review of this.

Great honest review. Thank you!

Hi Sam thanks for the review. I purchased a profilux 4 and a kh director late last year and they are still in my spare room. It was a job I was going to do over the Xmas break but I have been having second thoughts about installing it. After watching your video I have decided that I will put them on the market. I think I will end up getting a kh keeper instead. My goal in reefing was to keep it as simple as I can. Cheers Paul

Thank you for the review, if you have the same issue with other WiFi devices in the future give your router a reboot as sometimes when things fail to connnect they can block them from re attempting for security. Might explain why your Lan cable didn't work with it and it mystery started working after a couple of days. Interesting bit of kit look forward to part two :) p.s. your tanks looking amazing 👌

Great review! I honestly hate tinkering for ages on something to get it to work. Seems like everyone across the board are not happy with the difficulty. Still interested with the overall result though. I was excited for this product.

Man I love this. I'd also love to see a 3 month review on how it worked, maintenence, reliability, problems, etc..... seriously, thank you so much for this. I'm in the market for an auto tester and doser so if this works I'd be happy to order from an affiliate link...just sayin.... 😁

thanks for an awesome video sam. I was on the fence about buying one of them. not anymore

Thank you for the genuine review which is so important nowadays with the cost of these things. I'm surprised how awkward the wifi set up was. I run a profilux 4 and the set up for that was average compared to many. On the P4 they ditched the LAN connection which is a massive downer. I ran the Profilux 3 years ago and that included the LAN. Good to see the LAN on the dosers but why not the Profilux, very odd. Really interested to see how accurate this thing is. Its been delayed for a very long time so you'd think it should be accurate. I've yet to like an auto tester. I've had the reefbot and found it junk, had the mastertronic and found it unreliable and just not accurate compared to icps. Fingers crossed the ion director is accurate and what's great is I know you will tell us! cheers

Mate !!! Things you do to for us , I would give up in the first minute, manual testing is a pain but I think I will stick with it for a while longer 😅 but I will be interested to know if results of testing was worth the troubles you when through to set it up ,thanks for the video Sam .

I excited!! 😁🐶

I am just now joining the GHL fan club. I hope I don't have these issues as you did.

I could see the frustration coming through but you were very controlled and balanced. Looking forward to part 2. If the probe needs to be replaced every 6-12 months, what are they and the reference fluid worth?

Looking forward part 2. GHL connect app is a pain on another level. Very very slow with “Establishing connection”, “please wait”, “applying change” then fail.

Bloody hell, that looked a right faff to get setup. I have plenty of patience, but that would have had me crying in the corner 😂 Some bad decisions by GHL, no local storage? I have a cheap humidity sensor that stores 30 days of readings. So considering the cost of this, that’s a really bad design, especially when being sold as a standalone system! Also that probe design and location needs questioning. Why insert the probe on the side and then plug it in the back? Cable was heavy duty and too short, I can see that being a failure point. I bet a replacement probe isn’t going to be cheap. Thanks for the honest reviews, I see so many that people seem afraid to say anything negative. Long may they continue.

can't wait for part 2 now tbh lol

Another great video Sam Quick question: Where did you get your Vortech MP guard ? You mentioned it once but I can’t remember Thanks

Was gonna order it, noticed the lack of phosphate testing so then it was kinda pointless as i have to do the testing anyways. Did hear that they will update that in the future and the in development Reef factory tester is supposed to have it as well

Yeah they have the cleanest built setup I’m not a fan because no one sells GHL local but love how they stack

Mate, you aren’t the only one. GHL makes me pull my hair out. Now, I always put in a ticket and get Vinny or Josh Kraft (in our group who works with Vinny now) to come in remotely on Teamviewer. Yesterday, Josh went in remotely to setup Nick Rewis’s new GHL 2.1 SA Doser, and even he couldn’t get it online. Plus….Vinny is out of town till the 11/14. Talk about annoying! However, in GHL‘s defense every time I have had a piece of their equipment online I have very little problems with it. The equipment itself is solid, but the set up….dear gosh! 🤦🏼‍♂️

@Parkers Reef - Now a year later, can you please make another video on the GHL ION Director?

In my opinion the hardware for GHL is great. I wonder how many of them actually run home reef tanks though as they are not good for users. Are they aiming more for enterprise solutions such as coral farms, public aquariums etc? Was the standalone ION director an afterthought with the design assumed to connect to the profilux 4? Part of me wishes GHL would release an Application Programming Interface (API) for their hardware so people could write their own apps for control. One thing I haven't looked at recently is if they have sorted out alerts and sending alerts as text messages to your phone. That to me would be something important.

Almost bought one, theres talk of P04 , if that happens its next level

Да всё оборудование от GHL очень сильно заморочено😵, за обзор 👍

I'll stick to manual testing. It's not that hard and keeps me in the ballpark. Seems like it would be a nice tool to have but still seems buggy, or maybe you got a unit that was built at quitting time on Friday. lol I have the GHL 2.1 Doser and it has been great over the years. Would like to see better software. 💯

Hey Sam is your filter roller ok it's bunched up?

I'm holding out for your next review, should this work as per the instructions bye bye all other testers - cant argue this is the way to go,,, was also holding out for the new neptune Trident but should this work al jump

I tried a doser and profilux 5 plus years ago and had the same issues - terrible to see that nothing has improved in that time. You need a PC and that Windows 95 piece of looking software GCC to use any GHL hardware

You said you borrowed it from a friend. Did he have the same issues connecting to the internet? I’ve had the Profilux 4 and the KH Director for three years and didn’t experience the same difficulty connecting everything.

Good at making hardware... Baaaaad at making software!

Was it making a dhcp request? What did the dhcpd logs say? Time to bust out tcpdump!

Let’s hope they make some improvements., keen to see how it goes over a long period of time. Do they have a rough idea on life span of the probe? Also you still doing a follow up on KH keeper plus?

U a good boy SamSam! Thanks for do another good interesting video! 🥰🐶 I like ones with more fishes and corals more, but these is good for educations! 🥰🐶

as we say locally, "fook that for a game of soldiers"

Yeah I got a GHL dose a few years back when I tried out Triton. Like you SD the quality of the hardware is top notch. The software is junk to be honest. Setup and calibration is extremely frustrating. Not user friendly at all. Once you get it there it is good but getting it there and keeping it there is the problem. Whenever I refilled reagents it was a pain to get it to recognize the containers were full and to calibrate. I would bang my head on the wall and then out of the blue it would just work. I had to take it off line after a year and a half. This hobby is hard enough without this type of headache.

What happened to this I can’t find it anywhere for sale

Wow I’m glad I went with my apex lol 😂

Honestly for something that is "smart" it does seem complicated. I really don't understand why they say the director above pumps which might cause the tube to block due to twisting

Pake the connecivity poblem could be due to the fact of the ghl products don´t wok with 5G

I had the same experience with connecting to the internet... mindblowingly numbing... Same issues with history... no charts without myghl...

Sounds like poo Sam lots of work to setup. Will look forward though to the next one to see if it runs well 👍

Hi Parker I m really angry with GHL and don’t recommend them any more. My KH Director needed to be sent in for repair 3 times within 8 months! GHL was unable to at least provide a replacement unit during these month long absences. Technically the IOND works similarly to the KHD, by sucking in water from tank and some calibration fluids. If any of the dosing pumps goes crazy or if the device itself leaks (my case), you can forget about the results. I almost killed my tank by believing the KH results!

By the look of the thumbnail I hope Reef Factory values your feedback and come up with something better!

Dude... the setup looks like a nightmare. Hope it is worth it for anyone that has the budget and desire to buy it.

I had the same experience with my KHD - after hours of not connecting it sudden just had - argggh I hate this thing

Gosh, how tedious, GHL kit always looks so well made.

I wrote my comment before heqring the story about connecting to wifi..damn you have some patience. If it was me i would have retained it to supplier . Imagine paying 1500usd for somthing that doesn't work. In part 2 i want to see u putting it back in box and return it. What a wastee

The problem is probably not your connectivity, it is the ghl server that isn't responding... I heard a lot of that here in Germany from a lot of reefers. To be honest, especially the ion director in Germany is kind of a running gag, years of releasegags and nothing happenends, the probes needed to switch a lot of times. I know a lot of reefers that going away from ghl because of the shitty service for normal customers, without yt community ;) bad pump heads, etz etz so be aware. Have a good one, greetz from germany.

OMG You are a very patient man Sam. “Stück Scheiße” 😂

had neptune, was easy as hell and i hate pc set up.

Get a xepta job done :)

GHL products are great but their app is extremely frustrating.

Man, the software on these things is a nightmare. I do own a Profilux4 and IonD, the thing is that you need the P4 to be able to record stuff locally. The P4 has memory, however limited, so that is the reason you may want to chose what to save and how often. Now, viewing those graphs is plain stupid, you have to use the PC app, to download a text file (or CSV) which then you have to open and check. Stupid. The cloud service is more like a dump of data kind of implementation, the P4 will dump data there although with a few hours delay. That is stupid too. Btw, all GHL devices can dump data there. So if you had a P4, all the recordings would have been saved inside it....smart huh..... :| Regarding the tube lengths, GHL has the tendency to overcomplicate things. They must have smart people but dumb at explaining their own products, they don't explain why are you doing what are you doing. All that calculation is for one reason only, to know how much to flush the tubes in order to get tank water tested. So if your tubes hold 20ml, and you only flush 10ml, you will not test the tank water, but the leftover water form the previous test. You can set it as high as you would like, but you have to make sure the actual tank water is tested and not tube leftovers. You could just put 50ml and will flush the tubes really good. Also, I would recommend to use a scale to calibrate. SW is a bit heavier than RO water. Do more tests, like 3-4 and take the average for best calibration. Also, I have read somewhere that the placement of the device cannot be changed so either IonD is on the top or on the side. Don't know about that though. Another, quite important thing, and probably why you are asked for the 12h wait is air bubbles, you have to get them out. Hit the tubes to move them away. Also air bubbles can form on the sensor and will read very strange results....you just have to wait it out. They tried to fix that by soaking it first. So the whole long process is a poor attempt to stop bubbles from forming. Does not work all the time. The chamber for testing is quite small and there is no way to force bubbles out other than keep flushing and waiting. I see no reason to test more than 1 per day, I would have liked even lower but their statement is that lower periods is "evaluated". Whatever that means.

I've heard so much bad about GHL I pretend like they don't exist....buy an apex folks....never been happier with my reef automation

Regret purchasing GHL, my Amazon power bar has better connectivity then GHL

This is typical GHL setup for dosers.... Between the overly complicated setup, impossible remember how to programming anything, and the frequently lose of internet connectivity and/or losing default settings on GHL Connect, I wish i never bought GHL anything.... Nothing easy about GHL.

Man you were sounding like you were against this from the get go. Overly critical about even the small details. I mean, you even complained about tightening a screw to finger strength? Hmmm.

And this is exactly why I refuse to buy ghl. It's a Lamborghini with a Ford focus motor. There is absolutely zero excuse that a premium product uses software so primitive. It's a shame this day in age