Par Readings

[labnjab]

We borrowed a par meter from our local reef club to take some readings of our new lights on our 10 gallon nano and also the halides on our 75. Here what we got and these are the averages. I'm not familiar with whats good our bad other then all stonies are growing awesome in our 75 no matter where they are in the tank.

75 gallon with 2x250 watt hqi with dirty lenses and heavy flow and surface agitation, so theres room for improvement
1100 1 inch from bulbs
500 just below the surface
250 midway
150 on the sand
I'm going to clean up the lenses today and see if the reading improves.

Note: we have several acros and 2 clams growing happily on the sand bed

10 gallon with 10x3 watt gu10 led bulbs
Without optics
500 above water
200-230 just below surface
70-80 midway
50-60 on the sandbed
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking these numbers are just perfect for the softies and lps we plan to stock in this tank, since clams and acros are growing at a par of 150 in our 75

With optics-and it looks horrible, like a bunch of spot lights
1000 above the water
800 just below the surface
300 midway
200 on the sand

The leds have a huge difference in par with or without optics, but with optics it looks horrible so I'm leaving them off. Either way its pretty good for the price and energy savings. We have room in the fixture to add 8 more gu10 bulbs and play around with optics and no optics to get the best look and par. With the right combination it can be comparable to halides on shallow tanks.

[UnknownFish]

The par readings on the 75 sound great to me, I would put the optics back on and add a few more leds so is not like a bunch of spot lights, those are crazy par readings for a 10 gallon frag tank, awesome.

[labnjab]

Thank you. I tested another persons tank which had 2x250 watt halides and his par readings were the same.

We just ordered 8 more bulbs. Once we get them in I plan on adding the optics back on. With more bulbs it should't look too bad with optics on. I think we just have them too spaced out now.

Hopefully it will look halfway decent once we are finished with the light because we want to start using the 10 gallon to hold all the sps frags we have in the 75, as well as it being a softie tank. We have half a dozen frags for sale scattered throughout our 75 and I just don't like how it looks. We also need to make 20 or more frag but can't because we have no place to put them. If we get 200 par on the sand in the 10 gallon with the optics on then we can move all the frags to it and really clean up the 75