Biotek Marine BTM3000 PAR Sensor

Marquiseo · Mar 15, 2015

Anyone has this and care to comment about its worth? The talk about it stopped after it was out to stores.

Reefing Madness · Mar 17, 2015

BetURWrasse · Mar 21, 2015

Dextereef · Mar 21, 2015

I bought one last month and love it. Very easy to use. It comes precalibrated and took about 5 mins to download the software and I was off and running. It has a cool interval function. You can set it to take a reading at an interval of your choosing and it generates a file. I set it to take a reading every 10 seconds so I could move and get set in the position I wanted. Once you have all the measurements you want you hit stop and a file with all the readings is generated. Well worth the money and I got the same readings as I got with a $400 meter.

msderganc · Mar 21, 2015

I'd agree with Dextereef. I bought it as well, and it's so much easier/faster for me than a standard one. No writing down values, getting water everywhere, etc. I can focus on putting the sensor in the right location and I'm done in ten minutes.

djbetterly · Mar 22, 2015

How often do you need to re-take readings? I've always wanted to get a par reading in my tank, but I always looked at it as though it's a one time use. Forgive me if that's an ignorant statement...

mfinn · Jan 30, 2017

Any new info or reviews on this?

Marquiseo · Jan 30, 2017

I purchased it awhile back. It was easily to use. It quickly donned on me that I only needed to use it once. After that, it was pretty much useless because I knew my readings.

smokin'reefer · Jan 30, 2017

+1 on marquiseo. That's what I like about it. Why spend more on something that sits on the shelf. I used mine a lot for the first month. I had two lights and readings were low so I added a light. Used to get more readings. I maybe pulled it out twice more when placing more corals to check pars where I wanted to set corals. $195 shelf sitter makes more sense than some of the other options. Couldn't quite get my head around the usefulness of a phone app lux meter except to tell me light was on or not. Corals go where my phone can't. Underwater.

mfinn · Jan 30, 2017

Marquiseo said:
I purchased it awhile back. It was easily to use. It quickly donned on me that I only needed to use it once. After that, it was pretty much useless because I knew my readings.

smokin'reefer said:
+1 on marquiseo. That's what I like about it. Why spend more on something that sits on the shelf. I used mine a lot for the first month. I had two lights and readings were low so I added a light. Used to get more readings. I maybe pulled it out twice more when placing more corals to check pars where I wanted to set corals. $195 shelf sitter makes more sense than some of the other options. Couldn't quite get my head around the usefulness of a phone app lux meter except to tell me light was on or not. Corals go where my phone can't. Underwater.

Did you buy the optional wand for $53?

Seems like a person could make one for a few bucks.

smokin'reefer · Jan 30, 2017

Yeah. It's a carbon fiber selfie stick. It's handy but with a little creativity you could do without.

gus6464 · Jan 30, 2017

The BTM3000 is basically the Apogee SQ-420 which is basically the SQ-200 with a usb plug. Just add around 10% to your reading if your light is more on the blue side and you are in business.

xilez · Apr 11, 2017

Sorry to bump an older thread, but what's the reasoning behind bumping values 10% when running more blue? I haven't found anywhere else with that info... I ask because I ran some tests tonight and was shocked at how low the numbers where