No par meter? No problem for sps optimal growth

[FugeTown]

I almost took the leap and rented a Par meter until I had an idea that ended up working very nice. It’s very simple and will accomplish the same end result in making your sps tank happy with the appropriate amount of light. My light is led and suspended by two wires which always had me questioning should it be lower or higher or is it at the right height? I ended up clipping a couple small frags of my acro colony and glued one of them way at the top one in the middle and the colony is at the lowest point. I set them up like this so I could lower the light about an inch a week and the worst that could happen is the top frag will bleach out first which I won’t lose sleep over. To my surprise the top frag is doing great covering the frag plug and lots more polyp extension on the main colony. Over a couple months I’ve lowered my light a good 3-4” which seems to be a nice height for my tank. Thought I’d share this for people that didn’t have enough money for a par money and wanted to tinker with their lighting without having to worry about bleaching your prized colonies. I put a picture below so you can see, that top frag is becoming one of my favorite frags which was totally unexpected lol happy reefing everyone.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Glad it worked for you!

I generally place new additions at the sand bed for a couple days, then if they look okay, raise them a little for the same amount of time and observe. I do this till I have them where I think they will do okay.

I don't have a par meter, and this approach works well.

 

[FugeTown]

Glad it worked for you!

I generally place new additions at the sand bed for a couple days, then if they look okay, raise them a little for the same amount of time and observe. I do this till I have them where I think they will do okay.

I don't have a par meter, and this approach works well.

Yea I do that with new corals but I was wondering what if I put the colony up higher and instead of killing a massive colony just fragging a small piece of the colony works as a nice tool. All my corals are acclimated now this is just a fine tuning stage to see how high I can really put them without sacrificing my colonies. Awesome little trick if your not 100% familiar with how strong your light actually is. I do have control of how intense each diode is but not getting into that because that’s a lighting forum which this forum is already slightly on the edge of lol. Love my acros though , gonna be buying some more montipora eventually too Can’t get enough SPS

 

[Flippers4pups]

There are ways to use a lux meter and do a conversion to get Par. It's close to being accurate and a lux meter is way cheaper than a par meter.

LUX vs PAR question??

Everything I read uses PAR however the only thing I can find are LUX meters. From all the information I read LUX and PAR is not the same thing can somebody make this more simple for me? Can someone also give me the name of the app that gives PAR not LUX readings? Thank you for your time and...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[FugeTown]

Always thought of trying one of them

 

[Flatlandreefer]

Good idea if you have two frags of the same piece. The downside of a par meter rental is if you find out that your par is much lower than you would like, it is tough to make any adjustments and verify the results with only a week of rental time to work with unless you are ok with a few dead corals. I would highly recommend anybody setting up a new tank to rent a par meter before putting any coral in so you can get your lights dialed in, I wish I would have.

 

[FugeTown]

Good idea if you have two frags of the same piece. The downside of a par meter rental is if you find out that your par is much lower than you would like, it is tough to make any adjustments and verify the results with only a week of rental time to work with unless you are ok with a few dead corals. I would highly recommend anybody setting up a new tank to rent a par meter before putting any coral in so you can get your lights dialed in, I wish I would have.

Well I purchased a “medium “ acro online for short money and there was three little pieces broken off so of course I fragged them and thought of this idea. This colony is huge though I could make a ton of frags with it but I want it to stay a colony so I can enjoy it when I get out of work every day. I might rent or even buy a par meter some day but they are a lot of money and really don’t need one.