PAR goals

[tomkun]

Hey everyone so I finally got a chance to rent a par meter and after seeing my par levels I'm really unsure of what I should set my radion intensity too. My tank is a 25 lagoon 24x20x12 and light is a radion xr15 Gen5 hanging 8" above the tank. I tank mainly consist of softies and LPS sitting on the lower level of the tank but I do have a RBTA that sits halfway up the tank.

My problem is if I set my intensity to 80% the get the recommended par of 150 for my sand bed my anemone would only get about 180 par. If I raised my intensity to 100% the par for my anemone would be around 230 and the sand bed would raise to 200. Which intensity should I be aiming for, would the anemone be ok at lower level pars or will my lps/softies do fine at 200?

 

[Alchameth]

150 PAR on the sand bed? I have mine sitting at 75-100 PAR on the sand, with the highest tops of my rocks at 150-160. On the sand I have plates, blasto's, acans, ricordea, hammers and torches. My RBTA that is sitting in the bottom corner where the PAR is < 100 and looks as happy as can be. The BTA can move up and will if it wants more light.

 

[Dbichler]

You would be fine at either setting honestly.

 

[Brett S]

Corals and anemones are pretty adaptable and they can adjust to a pretty wide range of light. But the important thing is to make changes slowly. If you’ve got corals at 150 PAR now and you want to bring them up to 200 PAR then do it slowly over a couple of weeks. Don’t just go from 150 to 200 overnight.

 

[tomkun]

I have it set to acclimation mode for 45 days

 

[Brett S]

45 days is probably way more than you need to just go up 50 par, but extending it like that certainly won’t hurt anything. Much better to go too long than too short.

 

[Bpb]

Agree either of those would be fine. I’d probably shoot for the lower of the two

 

[Max_nano]

Have you considered raising the light and raising the intensity. Raising it may spread the par better so there are less drastic changes in spots