Too Much Light or not enough?

[AcroFarmerRWB]

Nothing over $300! Are we in the same hobby!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

If your serious about growing corals and are dedicated to using halides or t5 then I would for see no reason not to justify spending $300 on a meter to accurately test output. I use my par meter to check my halides and t5 lights for I guess you could say hotspots and to see when I need to switch out bulbs when the par drops under a certain level.
There are a few companies that make ones now that attach to your phones and work great and are much cheaper I will be retiring my apogee here soon for one.

itd be nice to see how accurate it is in comparison. And call me when the Apogee needs re homing. I have a lot of other lighting meters to keep it company.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Nothing over $300! Are we in the same hobby!

yep.
just not at the same store.

 

[AcroFarmerRWB]

I agree on most people not wanting to spend the money on a meter, but I would also think that those same people probably are not in the hobby enough to care or even know what par is...... But instead happy when something does good and move it when it does bad.
I sell and grow a ton of corals so checking and playing with Par is very important to me.

 

[AcroFarmerRWB]

yep.
just not at the same store.

Haha agreed!

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I agree on most people not wanting to spend the money on a meter, but I would also think that those same people probably are not in the hobby enough to care or even know what par is.....

Its not about want to. Cant.
And we know what par is.
Check the local forum.
People passionate enough to sacrifice to stay in the hobby know as much as everyone else. But are lucky if the light is $300. Usually thats the most expensive piece.
A simple lux meter is a great way to make sure your getting a 300 light that will actually work and grow something.
You can pull it out in the dark alley or crummy fish store and test it.

 

[AcroFarmerRWB]

Didn't mean that in any personal attack, just saying without having a par meter I wouldn't waste time trying to test light output or even worrying about it in terms of numbers.
Lux is basically light used and seen by the human eye where are par is the amount of radiation that the light is putting off and will be available to corals.
For example test an incandescent bulb up close it will test high but there is no chance of growing a coral under it successfully.

 

[mcarroll]

I have been in the hobby for years I help start MASNA and our club has held 4 MACNA's. I like robe forward thinking and spend a lot of time learning new technologies in the hobby. It's what I do for a living and for fun. [emoji3] I calibrate inspection lighting at work for people doing quality checks so I have had training in color cast testing. Lighting is a changing market in a very few years we will find MH and T5 not available due changing EPA regulations. As we are seeing now with basic light bulbs try finding a 120 watt light bulb. Sanjay just posted his thoughts on LED's after using them for 2 years now.
https://www.facebook.com/sanjay.joshi.792/posts/10154222777700329

Either that's a dead page or I will have to sign up for Facebook to see it (not happening)...

Any key quotes you could relay?

Sanjay's intense lab work - tons of data - is what got me into halides, but other of his work later on has seemed a little influenced. Still curious what he's up to now tho.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Didn't mean that in any personal attack, just saying without having a par meter I wouldn't waste time trying to test light output or even worrying about it in terms of numbers.
Lux is basically light used and seen by the human eye where are par is the amount of radiation that the light is putting off and will be available to corals.
For example test an incandescent bulb up close it will test high but there is no chance of growing a coral under it successfully.

not personal at all. Its the honest state of america and our hobby.
and
um not quite true. you can grow coral under shop light of the correct intensity. A warm white and cool white combo is preferred. (Covers the entire spectral range=UV & Ur)A phillips par 30 is actually works really well.
no it may not color up well but it will grow quite well actually.

Lux is a measurement of intensity. For camera and your eye. A scientific measurement like inches.
A par meter takes intensity(lux) and also color information (so a color meter AND an intensity meter in one) to calculate the amount of useful photosynthetic radiation. you already use lux but didnt know it.
intensity at a given distance is a constant. by changing the spectral frequency while keeping the same intensity will increase par. lowering intensity while increasing specific frequency will maintain that same par.
thats why leds work so well with lower intensity(luminous intensity not spectral).

 

[AcroFarmerRWB]

hummmm..... I guess you right my friend!




Good luck!
And
Happy reefing!

 

[mcarroll]

[...]
Lux is basically light used and seen by the human eye where are par is the amount of radiation that the light is putting off and will be available to corals.
For example test an incandescent bulb up close it will test high but there is no chance of growing a coral under it successfully.

The "human eye" thing gets undue weight in the conversation and I don't understand why. Practical experience shows it's not that relevant however true it is.

I just checked to be sure and incandescent bulbs do not rate higher than expected:

• A GE Reveal three-way bulb at 150 watts only reads about 12,000 lux at 2 inches from the bulb.
• A Maxspect Razor 160 watt pulling about the same watts reads over 50,000 lux at 12 inches.

The reading on an incandescent bulb by either a PAR meter or lux meter should, however, be more accurate as that (5000K) is the color source both meters are calibrated for.

 

[reefwiser]

Any key quotes you could relay?
.

Sanjay Joshi
20 hrs ·


Its been 2 years now since I started the LED experiment on my 500G reef. I replaced by 3 400W MH with EcoTech Marine 8 Radion G2 pro LEDs and I have been quite satisfied with the change. No more chiller's turning on in the summer, although I do have to increase the heaters in winter.

Coral color has been great, and am satisfied with the growth on most corals. I would say that the growth rate is about 80% of what I was seeing with the MH on most corals. And that is fine with me given the other benefits I gain from using LEDs, such as not having to replace MH bulbs every year, not turning on my chiller in summer, and creating dusk effects for fish spawning. I have had 100% reliability on the units, which is impressive. I was expecting to see some hardware failure, but that has not happened yet.

Does that mean that LEDs have reached the pinnacle of reeflighting ? There are a lot of things I like about LEDs, but I would still hesitate to make that statement. There are still a few issues that they need to resolve. In my assessment, I would list them as follows:

1) spread of light. I still find the light more directional than MH wihich has its pluses and minuses. But for a large tank like mine I would like more spread and less shadowing caused by the light directionality
2) Better mixing of colors. While there has been an improvement in this respect especially by LED designs that use tightly clustered LEDs, I still do not like seeing multiple colors in the shadows.
3) Spectrum - While a lot of people swear by the heavy blue spectrum, I would much rather prefer fuller spectrum LEDs.
4) No power reduction when dialing in the LED spectrums. Most lights in the market today (except for the new AI Hydra) reduce total power and light output when reducing the intensity of the different LED channels.

There are still some corals where I am not seeing growth that comes even close to MH. Most noticeably on A. Millepora, and the green Bali Slimer. These are corals that grew as weeds under my MH, but grow significantly slower under my LEDs. Its does not seem like an issue of light quantity but I think the light quality plays a bigger role here. There is another odd observations I can make about coral growth under LEDs. I found that corals frags tend to develop a larger base encrustation with LEDs, wonder why ?.
Then a whole bunch of famous reef people talk about lighting. You miss a lot not when not on Facebook its sort of like the old days on Fishnet back in the 1980's when people actually discussed stuff.

 

[mcarroll]

No comment on Facebook, but thanks for the cross-post!

1) the emitters are too close together

2) there are too many separate emitter colors

3) Meaningless aesthetics? I presume he would've been more specific if he was talking about UV or filling in the dip on the white LED spectrum curve, etc.

4) Useless feature related to the aesthetics above.

None of those are surprising and they are shared in common with most shoe box style fixtures like that.

Observations on growth are more interesting.

If he would speak in data the way he did back in the metal halide days (this was pre-Facebook), we might have some suggestions. How much light is he putting down, for example? How much area is actually covered by peak lighting vs edge lighting? How does all that compare to stats from his old halides? Numbers please! [emoji6]

 

[reefwiser]

I have his schedule for his Radions I have not loaded it on mine since I am using Nav's schedule which gives me good color.