Poll: How do you measure light output?

[dbl]

Thought it might be interesting to see how everyone is measuring your light strength/output in your systems. What are you using to determine you have the right amount of light? Are you doing anything to measure it? So let's see what everyone is doing.

 

[cracker]

I use a simple Apogee par meter.

 

[dbl]

I use a simple Apogee par meter.

Same here @cracker

 

[mta_morrow]

I voted PAR meter. I purchased a Seneye when I moved. The club I belonged to had PAR meters that we could check out. I don't have a club around here and felt it was important enough to have one.

 

[Luno]

Tapatalk needs to be able to show polls it never does. Can't see the pole but vote par meter

 

[cracker]

Same here my tiny local club disbanded so I bought my own. It's a nice tool for salt keepers. the intensity of all the different color lights can be deceiving.

 

[corey01]

I use a Seneye. really should get around to seeing about the monitoring abilities it claims to have.

 

[ChiCity]

Eyeball it by gauging the corals previous placement in its previous home.

Using charts and par numbers others have posted online...

 

[cracker]

this is how I mounted the sensor . any others like this?

 

[dbl]

this is how I mounted the sensor . any others like this?

Don't have a picture but I made something very similar out of some scrap acrylic I had laying around.

 

[cardiffgiant]

neptune PMK

 

[Crabs McJones]

I use the Seneye to measure my lights. Its not a proper couple thousand dollar meter, but after BRS did their testing on it, it comes close enough for my liking

 

[Labridaedicted]

Love my Neptune PMK. Allowed me to make some great PAR curves at all my colonies locations.

 

[Yati]

19 years in the hobby, not once have I measured, thought about measuring or cared about measuring

 

[BillyP]

Thought it might be interesting to see how everyone is measuring your light strength/output in your systems. What are you using to determine you have the right amount of light? Are you doing anything to measure it? So let's see what everyone is doing.

I use a seneye meter.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

I'm surprised by these results. They suggest that one out of three reefers measure with a PAR meter (if a representative sample of reefers voted in the poll). Just a few years ago, you were incredibly lucky if a local reef club or fellow reefer had a PAR meter to lend.

I'm also surprised that almost two out of three reefers choose to have no quantitative method of measuring light intensity at all. Especially when lux meters are $10 - $15 on Ebay/Amazon.

 

[fish farmer]

I voted that I don't measure, but since those lux meters are cheap I'll probably pick one up.

 

[kashman100]

Seneye

 

[Ashish Patel]

Having a PAR meter is really helpful when moving corals and acclimating. Once you get an idea of your tanks PAR in different areas you don't really need to use the PAR meter that often. I've used my seneye few times in 1 year and the best example of it really coming in handy was when measuring PAR and acclimating sps on a frag rack. Unlike what people say "start at the bottom and work your way up, I had to do the opposite and start midway to the top right and work my way down where there was more PAR, which was 5" away from the sand. PAR meter won't save you from burning coral you still have to observe the corals color and take note if they can handle the PAR. Based on what i've seen its better to give you corals less PAR for longer then High par for shorter, in other words 150 PAR for 10 hrs is better than 300 PAR for 5hrs.

 

[Rakie]

I get the BASE level/idea from the BRS videos on the lights PAR values at X intensity, and divide/multiple accordingly. According to BRS it's a +/- 5% accuracy which I can live with.

After that, I rely on coral health and coloration.

You can get by without anything but coral health and coloration, but I just like to know the numbers for reference. It's something I can do to log/replicate what I'm doing, if my setup ever changes/gets lost, or if I get a new tank, etc etc.