Hi all,
I am sharing my PAR readings on an Apogee par meter lent to me by a local reefer. Specs below:
Tank: Fluval Evo 13.5g
Lights: 2x ReefBarPro "Blue Heavy" 20" bars that are actually 18" (from 21LEDusa)
Positioning of the bars:
Here are pictures of the tank without PAR readings/labels:
Here is the labeling of the corals/nems in this tank:
The lights have 2 channels each. Here are the specs of each bar, copied directly from 21LEDusa (link):
This listing is for the BLUE HEAVY 20 inch ReefBar Pro with 20 3W Bridgelux LEDs: 9x 445nm Actinic Blue 3x 465nm Aqua Blue 2x 423nm UV 4x 12,000K White
12k- 12000k bluish white For beautiful viewing color and High Brightness including several important spectrums
423 nm UV Purple just at one peak of Chlorophyll A
445 nm Royal Blue at the happy medium of Chlorophyll A and B
465 nm Light Aqua Blue just at one peak of Chlorophyll B
The two channels can be programmed with a controller. Channel 1 is all of the 445nm Actinic Blue LEDs. Channel 2 is the other blues/UV/White.
I measured the PAR at 3 settings. Tested settings were:
1. 70% Channel 1 (Actinic Blue), 25% Channel 2 (Aqua Blue/UV/White) -- this is my current setting ramping up at 7:30am and ramping down at 6:30pm. It was just a guestimate of what my corals need and what looked nice.
2. 85% Channel 1, 50% Channel 2
3. 100% Channel 1, 100% Channel 2
Where I measured:
1. All around the perimeter of the tank at the sand bed, middle and the top (first reading 1); sand bed and middle front only (reading 2) and just sand bed front only (reading 3)
2. Around the corals/nems listed in the above pictures and tops of rocks/empty spaces
Drum roll for PAR readings:
Reading 1
Reading 2
Reading 3
Conclusions:
These bars seem to have quite good penetration and can easily achieve up to 200 PAR on the sand bed with 2 bars. There are definitely some hot spots, and you can tell that they are where the spread of the two bars overlap the most, but they don't hit the highest at the top of the rocks (although still high at the top), more at the middle. At $75 apiece and an inexpensive controller, these definitely classify in the budget range of lights and are convenient for tanks that would do best with a bar across them or restrictions on lights high above them. A single bar is definitely putting out more PAR than the comparable Fluval Marine 3.0 bar, which I had previously. Using Photone app a long time ago, I was getting about 50% higher uncalibrated PAR readings on the single ReefBarPro over the Fluval Marine 3.0. With 2x ReefBarPro bars on a Fluval Evo 13.5g, I think you can achieve most of your LPS and maybe SPS needs. I am unable to grow SPS in this tank, so I don't know for sure (dirty water, difficulty with algae, etc).
FYI, I am following up this post with a coral-specific post to get advice from all of you fine folks, since you can see that there is a lot of variation in the PAR readings, and what would be best for my range of LPS, softies and RFAs is not entirely clear to me.
I hope this is helpful to some people. Thanks, and I'm happy to discuss!
Joe
I am sharing my PAR readings on an Apogee par meter lent to me by a local reefer. Specs below:
Tank: Fluval Evo 13.5g
Lights: 2x ReefBarPro "Blue Heavy" 20" bars that are actually 18" (from 21LEDusa)
Positioning of the bars:
Here are pictures of the tank without PAR readings/labels:
Here is the labeling of the corals/nems in this tank:
The lights have 2 channels each. Here are the specs of each bar, copied directly from 21LEDusa (link):
This listing is for the BLUE HEAVY 20 inch ReefBar Pro with 20 3W Bridgelux LEDs: 9x 445nm Actinic Blue 3x 465nm Aqua Blue 2x 423nm UV 4x 12,000K White
12k- 12000k bluish white For beautiful viewing color and High Brightness including several important spectrums
423 nm UV Purple just at one peak of Chlorophyll A
445 nm Royal Blue at the happy medium of Chlorophyll A and B
465 nm Light Aqua Blue just at one peak of Chlorophyll B
The two channels can be programmed with a controller. Channel 1 is all of the 445nm Actinic Blue LEDs. Channel 2 is the other blues/UV/White.
I measured the PAR at 3 settings. Tested settings were:
1. 70% Channel 1 (Actinic Blue), 25% Channel 2 (Aqua Blue/UV/White) -- this is my current setting ramping up at 7:30am and ramping down at 6:30pm. It was just a guestimate of what my corals need and what looked nice.
2. 85% Channel 1, 50% Channel 2
3. 100% Channel 1, 100% Channel 2
Where I measured:
1. All around the perimeter of the tank at the sand bed, middle and the top (first reading 1); sand bed and middle front only (reading 2) and just sand bed front only (reading 3)
2. Around the corals/nems listed in the above pictures and tops of rocks/empty spaces
Drum roll for PAR readings:
Reading 1
Reading 2
Reading 3
Conclusions:
These bars seem to have quite good penetration and can easily achieve up to 200 PAR on the sand bed with 2 bars. There are definitely some hot spots, and you can tell that they are where the spread of the two bars overlap the most, but they don't hit the highest at the top of the rocks (although still high at the top), more at the middle. At $75 apiece and an inexpensive controller, these definitely classify in the budget range of lights and are convenient for tanks that would do best with a bar across them or restrictions on lights high above them. A single bar is definitely putting out more PAR than the comparable Fluval Marine 3.0 bar, which I had previously. Using Photone app a long time ago, I was getting about 50% higher uncalibrated PAR readings on the single ReefBarPro over the Fluval Marine 3.0. With 2x ReefBarPro bars on a Fluval Evo 13.5g, I think you can achieve most of your LPS and maybe SPS needs. I am unable to grow SPS in this tank, so I don't know for sure (dirty water, difficulty with algae, etc).
FYI, I am following up this post with a coral-specific post to get advice from all of you fine folks, since you can see that there is a lot of variation in the PAR readings, and what would be best for my range of LPS, softies and RFAs is not entirely clear to me.
I hope this is helpful to some people. Thanks, and I'm happy to discuss!
Joe
