Your Highest and Lowest PAR Acropora?

ajjw0828 · Dec 15, 2020

Silent said:
I have a red planet in high par and low par on the bottom of the tank to see the color differences. Grow well either way but colors are very different.

Would love to see the color difference if you have any photos?

Silent · Dec 15, 2020

ajjw0828 said:
Would love to see the color difference if you have any photos?

I wish. I take horrible pictures with my cell phone.

Manny’s Reef · Jan 21, 2023

Bump. Let’s revive this amazing thread.

biecacka · Jan 21, 2023

I do t have par numbers anywhere near that high (500and above). My tank rockwork stops around 270 or so. Sure as they grow upwards they will get more par. But I don’t have the ability to start them in that high of par. I sometimes wonder if I should buy from similar par tanks. Haha

corey

mrpontiac80 · Jan 21, 2023

I really like this topic

Juano908 · Jul 14, 2023

Very interesting topic, let’s keep this going.

Kactai · Nov 25, 2023

I’ve had a few Millie’s wasting away on a frag rack at about 150-200 PAR. As soon as I put them on rock under direct lighting they go kablamo, start colouring back up and show some major polyp extension at 300+ to max 600. They are just tiny frags now. I’m running the Saxby settings on my AI 64HD maxing out at 78% intensity. The tank is only 8 months old.

I love this thread because I have about 30 frags of assorted SPS from Tenuis, torts, stylos, monti’s and Millie’s all ready to go into the display in a few weeks and I’m super obsessed with placement to make the tank look banging.

Reefahholic · Nov 27, 2023

I recently got too high with whites. Was cooking them a bit too much. I noticed growth slowed down, PE decreased, and color was starting to fade. Some of the tips were becoming distorted. What growth I did have was getting so compacted. I just don’t care for the look. Almost immediately after turning it down I saw increased PE, and color started to get better. Tips recovered in about 14 days.

This was before and after I turned it down:

Miyagi Torts always look healthier to me in lower light. When PAR is like 400+ the green disappears.

Bottom LT is more PAR/White.

PC rainbow looks better in lower light. The one I have on the bottom of the tank is outgrowing the one in 450-500 par. The higher par piece is completely red. No other colors at all. This is a daylight pic below:

Most of my SPS seem to be really happy in about 300-450 with less white, no green, and a little red. White starts to become really harsh after a certain percentage, but my system runs fairly clean. It’s different in every system. Plus, white from LED’s is different than white from Metal Haldies or T5’s.

JoJoIndy · Apr 12, 2025

lemonade said:
Well for those who want their corals to look natural, or mimic a natural reef environment in their tank, then it would be helpful. I agree, if you're running some crazy all blue spectrum and 12dkh then it may not matter much. Trying to recreate certain conditions would be hard if you didn't know where the specific specimens are collected.

Luckily, there's plenty of info available on Acropora species and we can see where a lot of these corals grow naturally so we can do our best to give them optimal conditions.

My worthless 2 cents… It seems like the more we try and mimic natural ocean sea water in this hobby the more things go wrong. At least against the old logic of super high par, super low nutrients, and deep sand beds and all that ****.

Corals are highly adaptable. They just like stability and consistency. Slow changes.