New AP 700s

[cmattdvc]

Ok guys, I've just gotten a 240 gallon cube, I've decided to run two Kessil AP700s as my lighting.

Right now I've got almost all zoas with a fair amount of LPS (few acans, mostly torches and a few hammers) with about three sps thrown in the mix.

Would any one that's using these lights be willing to share a lighting schedule/intensity level to start with? I'm currently using Reef Radiance Starfires as my lighting.

Fish at this point is a yellow tang, four clowns, a damsel and a leopard wrasse. All of which are in my current two tank system. Undecided on who will make the move to the 240 and who will reside in the new frag system.

Thank y'all!

 

[mcarroll]

You should acquire a light meter to compare your old lights and your new lights intensity. The new lights should be as close to the same as possible to the old lights for the transition. If you want to go up or down in intensity from there wait a few months.

A free lux meter app for your smart phone is a very good start.

A handheld lux meter (like the "LX-1010B") usually costs under $15 and is even better.

 

[bif24701]

Need some info first.

Let me say this, using a PARmeter is the only way to ensure your animals are getting enough or not to much light.

How are your lights mounted? I'm assuming you expect them to cover a 48x24" are each? You will need to mount them higher according to Kessil recommendations.

For acclimating I suggest taking it very slow, these lights are very powerful, it is far more likely to burn your animals than they not get enough light. It took 3 months for all my corals to adjust going up in intensity only 5% each week.

Many factors determine how much intensity you need. Water clarity, depth, spread, coral type, and more.

If you can't get a PAR meter start at 30%, seems low but trust me. Increase 5% each week until your at 70%. I wouldn't go past 70% unless you have a PAR meter or increase more slowly, like 2-3% weekly.

I know this seems low and slow but trust me. These fixture do an incredible job at putting light into a tank.

 

[gus6464]

What are the dims on a 240 cube? Seems massive.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

it is massive.

I put a lux meter on the ap700 at macna. On a 48 by 24 in tank it was a an amazingly even spread of light over the entire tank. like amazing spread.

BUT , I only got 35000 lux at 12 in. at full power. almost dead even over the tank. I personally don't think one will do high light coral. It would be interesting to meter the two on that tank.

 

[gus6464]

it is massive.

I put a lux meter on the ap700 at macna. On a 48 by 24 in tank it was a an amazingly even spread of light over the entire tank. like amazing spread.

BUT , I only got 35000 lux at 12 in. at full power. almost dead even over the tank. I personally don't think one will do high light coral. It would be interesting to meter the two on that tank.

Lux meter is useless on a light with high violet which AP700 has. Also reflectors are not optics. An optic based light takes the photons and puts them in a concentrated beam. The purpose of a reflector is to even the spread of photons across a given area. A ledil brooke-w on a vero 18 hung high has at most a 50 par difference between the top and bottom of a 18" high tank. That's what a reflector is supposed to do. How do I know? I have tested this with my own planted tank reflector based builds.

The light is hanging 9" above an 18" tank. I tuned it to have ~100 PAR at the substrate. With 100 PAR at the substrate I was getting 150 at the top of the tank. 50 PAR in 18" is nothing. Put a 90deg optic on the same emitter and the difference would have been over twice the amount. 60deg over triple if not more.

A couple of other lights which lux meters are useless:
Radion G4 Pro - much more violets now
Philips CoralCare - high amount of luxeon uv in the blue channel
The two above will be even more dramatic than the AP700 .

Lights with a high amount of green spectrum also throw off a lux meter to give inflated par numbers. A lux meter is used to measure brightness based on the human eye. Human eye is most sensitive to green spectrum and least to violet. A 410nm beam will barely register on a lux meter while on a licor it will read high as it should. There is a reason why when doing the conversion from lux to par you need to know the conversion factor of the light source. Depending on the light source the constant will vary as much as 50%. Once you go through the equation the difference can be huge. Also the the conversion factor not only differs by light source but also by spectrum. The constant for a 3500K halide is different than the one for a 6500K even though the source type is the same. The LEDs we use in the hobby emit very narrow wavelength light. You need to know the conversion factor each wavelength to get a real approximation of PAR.

Why is using a lux meter much easier with freshwater planted? Because 90% of tanks use a light in the 5500-6500K range. You only have one conversion factor to deal with. To be able to get a real approximation in a reef light you would need to measure every color channel independently and then get the conversion factor for each wavelength and do the equation. Then once you have the converted PAR number for each wavelength you have to add them all up.

This is how a human and lux meter see light.

This is how a PAR meter sees light. (Apogee MQ-500)

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Lux meter is useless on a light with high violet which AP700 has.

not true. not debating here. a par really meter doesn't read above 400 anyway. you do know under the filters of the Par or quantum meter its the same cell as a lux meter or Fc photographic meter right?

That's what a reflector is supposed to do. How do I know? I have tested this with my own planted tank reflector based builds.

thats great. Im sure you also know a PAR meter as its reading both intensity AND color results can be skewed by the proximity of a light, or dark or dark or blue or red object, and to get a true representation of the amount of par transmitted by or available from a light source you need to do a black box test. By comparing the par received at at a specific lux/fc intensity you can make or calculate the lux par conversion. Read more dana riddle thats how he and apogee can give lux par conversion factors. Most manufactures leave these details out but this is how you get the par mapping in 3d we see in so many fixtures.Black box testing. So if you wear a white or red t shirt while you do the test while holding the sensor you threw off the results.

Im sure you also know a round ball on a meter is measuring light received from all angles so is there fore only an averaged sampling of the area and a flat disk to measure incident light or the exact amount of light falling on a surface. there fore measuring any light source to evaluate consistent even spread of a light source over a given area, an incidental meter is likely the best tool as it only reads intensity and the results are not skewed by color.

Bouncing it off of a reflector will only change the color (thus par) slightly and likely to the green of blue spectrum depending on the material used as a reflector sometimes it does go warm because the material is oxidising.
. How do i know, Ive been metering lights off of reflectors for 25+ years, and not just in fish tanks. We don't want actors faces turning green.

And as we all know if you really want to up your par at the same intensity(lux/fc), add yellow because after all the par meter was not invented for reefkeepers we just use them to0.

anyway prob a good choice for this tank unless he wants to reach more then 400 par, but two units might do it. It would be interesting to meter. with Both meters.

 

[gus6464]

I literally pasted the quantum response curve of an MQ500 above and you say it doesn't read above 400nm?

How on earth is this:

The same as this:

A lux meter reads light just how a human eye would. In this article by Dana Riddle he even states what I said above that you have to measure each wavelength independently when converting from lux.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2013/2/equipment

The 450nm reading is off by a whopping 50%. He didn't even measure violet which will be off by a good 75%+. Funny how the LEDs in the green spectrum measured twice as high in everything but the the Licor which is what he used as the baseline.

You can't just put a lux meter on a multi channel puck and call it a day. Hell his own conversion factors tell you this.

Lux to PAR Conversion Factors
If you have a lux meter, it is possible to convert lux measurements to PAR values. Use these results with some caution - in most cases it would be safe to assume the results will be low.

• Divide blue (450nm) LED Lux by 69
• Divide white (7,300 K) LED Lux by 45

At the end of the day PAR is something that should not be used in our hobby. The real metric for measuring proper lighting for corals and plants is PUR. A high PUR/low PAR light can grown stuff just as good than a low PUR/high PAR one. LED tech has advanced quite a bit to the point where you can blast a coral which the wavelengths that matter in photosynthesis while still showing low PAR on a meter and have the same growth.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I literally pasted the quantum response curve of an MQ500 above and you say it doesn't read above 400nm?

How on earth is this:

The same as this:

A lux meter reads light just how a human eye would. In this article by Dana Riddle he even states what I said above that you have to measure each wavelength independently when converting from lux.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2013/2/equipment

The 450nm reading is off by a whopping 50%. He didn't even measure violet which will be off by a good 75%+. Funny how the LEDs in the green spectrum measured twice as high in everything but the the Licor which is what he used as the baseline.

You can't just put a lux meter on a multi channel puck and call it a day. Hell his own conversion factors tell you this.



At the end of the day PAR is something that should not be used in our hobby. The real metric for measuring proper lighting for corals and plants is PUR. A high PUR/low PAR light will grow corals a whole lot better than a low PUR/high PAR one. LED tech has advanced quite a bit to the point where you can blast a coral which the wavelengths that matter in photosynthesis while still showing low PAR on a meter and have the same growth.

whats that got to do with the op's choice in lights?

 

[aquaterra]

Ok guys, I've just gotten a 240 gallon cube, I've decided to run two Kessil AP700s as my lighting.

Right now I've got almost all zoas with a fair amount of LPS (few acans, mostly torches and a few hammers) with about three sps thrown in the mix.

Would any one that's using these lights be willing to share a lighting schedule/intensity level to start with? I'm currently using Reef Radiance Starfires as my lighting.

Fish at this point is a yellow tang, four clowns, a damsel and a leopard wrasse. All of which are in my current two tank system. Undecided on who will make the move to the 240 and who will reside in the new frag system.

Thank y'all!

Back to the original question.

I used to have 2x gen2xr30s and visually matched the spectrum to the lights with the AB+ schedule. I'm a hoarder so I kept the radions and had them cover the sides. I max at 30% for all 3 lights with 350 par at the top and 120par at the bottom. The last and first hour I modified to be heavy rb + uv only. Definitely sign up for the iPhone beta if you don't have an iPad because it allows you to mix red and green in which I personally like doing at low % for better color depth.

 

[gus6464]

whats that got to do with the op's choice in lights?

It has everything to do with you saying one light is not as strong as the other based on your method of measurement which is flawed from the beginning. Unless you measured every independent wavelength by itself and calculated the correct conversion factor for each wavelength that lux number doesn't mean anything.

You say that a lux meter and quantum meter are the same? Well a quantum meter has filters which allow it to measure all wavelengths at the same baseline in order to come up with an approximate PAR number wheresas a lux meter does not.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

sweet reef dude! I think you answered your own question. Same technique w a par or lux meter.
did you get close to a match on par w the 2 ap700's alone?

 

[gus6464]

Back to the original question.

I used to have 2x gen2xr30s and visually matched the spectrum to the lights with the AB+ schedule. I'm a hoarder so I kept the radions and had them cover the sides. I max at 30% for all 3 lights with 350 par at the top and 120par at the bottom. The last and first hour I modified to be heavy rb + uv only. Definitely sign up for the iPhone beta if you don't have an iPad because it allows you to mix red and green in which I personally like doing at low % for better color depth.

Put the color wheel on deep ocean blue (bluest setting) and then put R at 20% and G at 60% and tell me how you like that color. I find it's a very crisp blue a la radium 20k

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

You say that a lux meter and quantum meter are the same?

no man im saying they have they same limitations. the both use a photovoltaic cell. for most reefers a lux meter is a very handy tool. if the op had not had a par meter I would recommend a lux meter and match color to eye then match intensity. then lower it 20% and acclimate 2000 lux a week or so.

 

[aquaterra]

Put the color wheel on deep ocean blue (bluest setting) and then put R at 20% and G at 60% and tell me how you like that color. I find it's a very crisp blue a la radium 20k

I like my unnatural crazy RBs so I do 20%red and 5% green with the deepest blue. My radions run at 100% RB and 100%UV at the end of the night and everything glows.

 

[gus6464]

sweet reef dude! I think you answered your own question. Same technique w a par or lux meter.
did you get close to a match on par w the 2 ap700's alone?

At MACNA Kessil was using the ipad app to control the AP700. The ipad version which is now old sets the maximum power of the light at 70%. The new android version allows you to set the light to 100% power. BRS got 200 PAR at 18" avg and they were using ipad app. Radion XR30 is 350PAR @ 18" with sensor right under the puck. Move slightly away it drops to 240 with avg in the 200 range. AP700 does 200 over a massive area.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

At MACNA Kessil was using the ipad app to control the AP700. The ipad version which is now old sets the maximum power of the light at 70%. The new android version allows you to set the light to 100% power. BRS got 200 PAR at 18" avg and they were using ipad app. Radion XR30 is 350PAR @ 18" with sensor right under the puck. Move slightly away it drops to 240 with avg in the 200 range. AP700 does 200 over a massive area.

is that with the new apogee and the conversions? Ive seen some really weird stuff off of the seneye. IMO kind of a contradiction to apogees methods.
fwiw its why I dont chase the numbers too hard. seems like big differences in meters or its the users.

 

[gus6464]

is that with the new apogee and the conversions? Ive seen some really weird stuff off of the seneye. IMO kind of a contradiction to apogees methods.
fwiw its why I dont chase the numbers too hard. seems like big differences in meters or its the users.

BRS uses the LiCor LI-192 which is basically the golden standard unless you can afford an integrating sphere. The only company I have seen publish numbers based on integrating sphere measurement is Philips.

 

[gus6464]

BTW if anyone wants to know why violet light in meters that don't have a proper quantum response show bogus reading you can read this:
http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/3609...comparison-pics-par-and-a-whole-mess-of-data/

The interesting bit is the measurements on the ATI True Actinic bulb. A short wavelength bulb with all output at basically 420nm. These measurements were done on a Labsphere LMS-3M which is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...mYXMTWmGRKb-0VVxTik/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true
The ATI True Actinic at 100 hours of runtime shows a measurement of 566 lumens. On a lux meter one would think this bulb is weak with no PAR. Well the actual PAR output is 369. ATI Blue+ on the other hand is 1374 lumens and 422 PAR. Then we go to Coral+ which is a bulb with a massive green spike measuring 2189 lumens but PAR wise it puts out 417.

 

[cmattdvc]

What are the dims on a 240 cube? Seems massive.

its roughly 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 by 24 deep.