Help with PAR

[AwildcatsZ]

I am building a Red Sea Reefer 250 and finished building my rockscape over the weekend. A fellow hobbyist let me borrow his PAR meter (Apogee MQ510) to map our the PAR in my tank. This is the first time I have ever measured PAR in my aquariums and do not know if I am in the right ballpark for a mixed reef (leaning towards SPS dominant). Are these PAR numbers appropriate? Should I dial the intensity back? Should I increase intensity (I don't think I need to)?

My lights are two Radion xr30 Pro Gen 4. I am running these at 60% intensity.

Besides acros, I would like to have torch corals, lobo, acan, zoa, mushrooms as I have a collection of these corals being held in a frag tank.

 

[Flippers4pups]

I am building a Red Sea Reefer 250 and finished building my rockscape over the weekend. A fellow hobbyist let me borrow his PAR meter (Apogee MQ510) to map our the PAR in my tank. This is the first time I have ever measured PAR in my aquariums and do not know if I am in the right ballpark for a mixed reef (leaning towards SPS dominant). Are these PAR numbers appropriate? Should I dial the intensity back? Should I increase intensity (I don't think I need to)?

My lights are two Radion xr30 Pro Gen 4. I am running these at 60% intensity.

Besides acros, I would like to have torch corals, lobo, acan, zoa, mushrooms as I have a collection of these corals being held in a frag tank.

200-300 par is adequate for most SPS, lps and softies.

 

[skysoblue987]

200 is too much PAR for torch corals. They seems happy around 125 to 150 PAR for me.

 

[TheGreatWave]

Looks good.

You have a bit of everything, you know where your bright spots are and shade, good stuff.

If it were me I might dial it back to have 150-200 PAR on the sand up front, but that doesn't really mean anything.

 

[AwildcatsZ]

200 is too much PAR for torch corals. They seems happy around 125 to 150 PAR for me.

I'm not so worried about the torch corals, as I had them near the top of my rock in my previous tank. I know they can handle higher light if they are acclimated to it. I'm more concerned with corals such as Scoly or Lobo which I know like lower light intensity.

 

[AwildcatsZ]

Looks good.

You have a bit of everything, you know where your bright spots are and shade, good stuff.

If it were me I might dial it back to have 150-200 PAR on the sand up front, but that doesn't really mean anything.

That was my thought. I may dial it back just a smidge. The PAR fluctuates in each location based on the surface movement. The PAR on the sand bed jumped around between 150-260. I took the extreme that I saw on the meter at each location.