Spaced Cowboy
South Bay Reefer
So having gone with the AI Sols, I wanted to see how well they were lighting the tank. The goal was always to have darker areas and more well-lit areas, I didn't want to blast everything in the tank with bright light, I wanted something that looked a little more natural.
So I started looking around for PAR meters - there's a couple of DIY projects but nothing calibrated and "ready to go", so I caved and looked at the professional ones. Apogee's meters seem to be the normal ones used, but after tax they were coming out at $400 or so. However... I noticed that they're calibrated to 5.0 µmol m^-2 s^-1 per mV, which means you just need to connect them up to a multimeter that reads millivolts accurately, and multiply by 5 to get the PAR rating. Excellent - the sensors are a lot cheaper than the full-blown meter, so that's the way I went.
Here's the results:
Sorry for the large image, it's a wide tank
Just below the water-level and in the center of the tank, it's at 960 PAR, which is pretty good Some of the numbers look a bit weird, but they're more to-do with the fact that it's hard to get a sense of depth from the photo, and if the reading is towards the front or back of the tank, it's much lower than it looks like it ought to be in 2D.
So, I guess the question is: is that good enough ? There seem to be areas that are good, but my gut feeling is that a bit more might be useful. There's another 2 AI units sitting in the shed and I could slot them into the support bar easily enough... That's just a gut feeling though, I don't really know what PAR I need, in order to keep corals... Anyone got any suggestions ?
BTW, the support beam isn't bending, it's an artifact that came in when I straightened the photo to make the tank look level. I'm not a great photographer
So I started looking around for PAR meters - there's a couple of DIY projects but nothing calibrated and "ready to go", so I caved and looked at the professional ones. Apogee's meters seem to be the normal ones used, but after tax they were coming out at $400 or so. However... I noticed that they're calibrated to 5.0 µmol m^-2 s^-1 per mV, which means you just need to connect them up to a multimeter that reads millivolts accurately, and multiply by 5 to get the PAR rating. Excellent - the sensors are a lot cheaper than the full-blown meter, so that's the way I went.
Here's the results:
Sorry for the large image, it's a wide tank
Just below the water-level and in the center of the tank, it's at 960 PAR, which is pretty good Some of the numbers look a bit weird, but they're more to-do with the fact that it's hard to get a sense of depth from the photo, and if the reading is towards the front or back of the tank, it's much lower than it looks like it ought to be in 2D.So, I guess the question is: is that good enough ? There seem to be areas that are good, but my gut feeling is that a bit more might be useful. There's another 2 AI units sitting in the shed and I could slot them into the support bar easily enough... That's just a gut feeling though, I don't really know what PAR I need, in order to keep corals... Anyone got any suggestions ?
BTW, the support beam isn't bending, it's an artifact that came in when I straightened the photo to make the tank look level. I'm not a great photographer
