Par reading

[gowingsgo]

Can some one on here tell me what a good par reading would be for acans and zoes. I barrowed a par meter from my reef club and I think that I may need to upgrade my lighting Far left and far right bottom of the tank was about 100 par and middle bottom was about 200 back to 260 front . I would have thought that this would have been much higher. I know that acans do not need much light but don't know to much about how much light zoes need. Is there a thread on here that talks about what lighting (Par reading) is good for certain types of live stock
Thanks

 

[corbett_n]

what kind of light fixture do you have?

 

[gowingsgo]

Sorry I have T-5 lighting 3 bulbs are blue plus 1 fugi purple and two bulbs are some type of daylight bulbs I can't remember exactly what they are. I bought them about 4 months ago and the paint has worn off them but I do remember they were some type of daylight bulb The tank is your standard 125 gallon tank not very deep at all and the lights are in a canopy that sits about 5" over the top of the tank the ballast are your standard ballast so the lights are not over driven and they do have the high end reflectors on them also the inside of the canopy is painted gloss white
Thanks

 

[IslandCrow]

That PAR should be just fine, though I may put the Acans a little closer to the areas above 100 PAR. They don't require much light compared to some corals, but I'd still consider them medium light corals. I don't think I've ever seen any sort of table showing PAR requirements for different corals. First, it's not quite that simple (different corals respond differently to different wavelengths within the photosynthetic spectrum). Along those lines, there are also a lot of other variables, such as color spectrum, water conditions, additional nutrition sources, etc. that would make such research difficult. And finally, I don't think there's been much, if any, research done in the area.

I don't know how much it will help, but here's the PAR readings I was getting for my old 46g tank with 4x36" Tek T-5 lighting. I didn't have any Acans at the time, but I'd kept a couple in the past with the same lighting.

 

[corbett_n]

you can keep Zoo's on the bottom easily

 

[gowingsgo]

Thanks Island Crow for your (as in-depth response as you could give). I kind of had that same feeling that there was not much research done on this or at lest no one has put any thing together what corals respond to different wavelengths within the photosynthetic spectrum. Your picture does help. I was concerned that I was just not getting enough light in my tank but it looks like as long as I am very carful were I place things in my tank I will be able to make every thing happy and healthy