PAR Meter?

[cactusreef]

I know this has been discussed previously but it’s been a while.

Is renting a par meter worth it? I don’t see many places that do that anymore but I don’t want to buy a fancy one to take a few measurements and not use it again. Is there a cheaper alternative to testing PAR? Does anyone know where to rent one online?

 

[Michael Hughes]

I bought a (relatively) cheap one on Amazon.

I found a PAR meter incredibly helpful for visualizing which parts of my scape are getting more light than others. There were some surprising findings, such as one spot on the sandbed getting 140 PAR while the rest was 90-100.

Others use watts per gallon as a rough estimate, but I personally found the specifics from my PAR meter very helpful. I still refer to the PAR map when placing new frags.

 

[JTP424]

I bought the cheapo on amazon as well. I think if you have more than one tank, plan on moving EVER or trading with other reefers it's beneficial to have to keep an eye on where things are across tanks.

 

[mmorrison55]

It’s a good tool to have in your repertoire, but honestly idk if they are needed.

I bought a nice one from brs that they “rent out” and then once it comes back, they sell it.so got it for a decent price. I used it once to get a general idea what par my lights were putting out throughout my tank.

But once my tank starts filling in and I have a lot of shadowing caused by the top level corals, it might come in handy again to re-measure.