Apogee PAR meter Issue...

[Kerreefer]

ok ive had an apogee par meter for about a year now. ive always wandered how my sps grew with only 80 par... well after researching the daylights out of this, i found Apogee themselves have a nice little light specrum graph with where there sensor reads at on nm scale. the problem with all his is anything in the actinic range down it reads from 30 down to 70% off on the readings. SO... all you people including myself with heavy actinic and even the 420 range (nearing violet) getting readings of low par on this instruent, you might as well guess on adding another 30-70% More par than what you actually have. the only PAR sensor i have found that reads the Full par range corectly is aout 650 bucks and is made by Li-Cor

Apogee's Site with spectral graph showing sensor's range:

http://www.apogeeinstruments.com/specsheets/SQ-100_300specs.pdf

Li-Cor's spectral sheet here. See the dif. for yourself.

http://www.licor.com/env/Products/Sensors/190/li190_description.jsp

I figured i would toss this out for all the tech-heads like myself that have ru into the same issue. this seems to be why.

 

[rtparty]

In all of my research and talking with Apogee in person, your numbers are off by a bit.

The meter under reads blues and violet by about 10% and over reads the reds by about 10%.

SPS can grow great in PAR of about 100. I wouldn't recommend people go out and throw a ton of SPS in that range but you can keep them alive and growing in it.

 

[Kerreefer]

In all of my research and talking with Apogee in person, your numbers are off by a bit.

The meter under reads blues and violet by about 10% and over reads the reds by about 10%.

SPS can grow great in PAR of about 100. I wouldn't recommend people go out and throw a ton of SPS in that range but you can keep them alive and growing in it.

odd because reading the graph apogee has posted on there site i linked, on a scale of 0-1 in 1/10 increments it shows that the sensor only ready .5 at 420nm and at 460nm it shows to be off by .25, showing a spectral perception of .75 out of 1. perhaps my eyes decieve me but i put a ruler to it so my eyes would not cross

 

[rtparty]

odd because reading the graph apogee has posted on there site i linked, on a scale of 0-1 in 1/10 increments it shows that the sensor only ready .5 at 420nm and at 460nm it shows to be off by .25, showing a spectral perception of .75 out of 1. perhaps my eyes decieve me but i put a ruler to it so my eyes would not cross

Apogee is a local company for me. They were at one of our club meetings and I talked to the rep. I asked him the exact same thing you are talking about.

He told me it doesn't under read or over read that bad.

 

[Kerreefer]

lol if i was an Apogee rep. and wished to keep my job i would glorify my product as well. Fortunately though i had the chance to be a Trane rep. and well there was no need to glorify what was the best product hands down... it simply was the best out there.

to me if you are going to place on your website your product's specs then say it does something the spec shows it incapable of, there is a marketing issue for its true purpose which is def. not best for reef keeping.

to boil it down to the issue at hand here. Either
A: Mr. Rep. is glorifying his product
or B: the spec sheet is wrong.

Also i wont glorify Trane because they are built not to far from me

 

[gcarroll]

True comparison of the two by an unbias third party that I and most other reefers seem to trust.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/7/review

 

[Kerreefer]

i actually read that earlier today. i also found they didnt test the 2 against any actinics but with halides which cannot produce solely the 400-500 nm range.

 

[Kerreefer]

there. i posted on there exact forum. perhaps they can shed "light" on this?

 

[Kerreefer]

oh why not...

-bump-