Will More Kessils Necessarily Equal More PAR?

BOMPH

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I currently have a 6ft tank, 18'D, 22'H, with 4 A360WEs, 2 on each side of the center brace. I was thinking about adding 2 more. I have great coverage, but was thinking of getting 2 A360NE and put them in the middle of each pair, for better penetration in the middle of the light spread.

Was thinking i could run the 2 new NE's as 'actinics' only, and just increase the intensity of the lights with my controller to match the 4 lights acting as my 'sun'. I would think this blue would make the colors pop even more during the daylight hours of my photoperiod. Not sure how this will play out, it sounds like a good idea, but we shall see.

In any case, Is PAR additive? Meaning, I add more lights, i get more PAR? This is not my end goal, per se, it's just a question I had when thinking of enhancing my setup. I would assume so.
 
I think I understand what you are trying to do. To answer your question, PAR is additive where the light coverage overlaps. Think of those Venn diagrams in school where 2 circles overlap a bit and the area in the middle is the area of higher PAR.
I think the choice of the 360e would give you very little area of higher PAR, and might not be the best choice. I would vote for T5 actinic or Reefbrite strips to add some more blue pop to your tank. If this doesn't match the look of your tank, you might want to add more kessils we lamps but have the middle unit on each side (#2 and #5) be the blue light actinic one. That would even out the spread. Does that sound reasonable?
 
I think I understand what you are trying to do. To answer your question, PAR is additive where the light coverage overlaps. Think of those Venn diagrams in school where 2 circles overlap a bit and the area in the middle is the area of higher PAR.
I think the choice of the 360e would give you very little area of higher PAR, and might not be the best choice. I would vote for T5 actinic or Reefbrite strips to add some more blue pop to your tank. If this doesn't match the look of your tank, you might want to add more kessils we lamps but have the middle unit on each side (#2 and #5) be the blue light actinic one. That would even out the spread. Does that sound reasonable?

Makes sense what you are saying. I was thinking the same, #2 and #5 are the 'permanent' actinics, 1,3,4,6 would shift to daylight over the course of my photoperiod. Was thinking the NE's for penetration, but my tank isn't that deep (20"), could still go with the WE's.
 
I think I understand what you are trying to do. To answer your question, PAR is additive where the light coverage overlaps. Think of those Venn diagrams in school where 2 circles overlap a bit and the area in the middle is the area of higher PAR.
I think the choice of the 360e would give you very little area of higher PAR, and might not be the best choice. I would vote for T5 actinic or Reefbrite strips to add some more blue pop to your tank. If this doesn't match the look of your tank, you might want to add more kessils we lamps but have the middle unit on each side (#2 and #5) be the blue light actinic one. That would even out the spread. Does that sound reasonable?

Makes sense what you are saying. I was thinking the same, #2 and #5 are the 'permanent' actinics, 1,3,4,6 would shift to daylight over the course of my photoperiod. If it looks terrible, then I will just run all on the same schedule and color shift

Was thinking the NE's for penetration, but my tank isn't that deep (20"), could still go with the WE's I guess.
 
I started with 3 x A360WE's on a 6ft 200g tank and the coverage ratings are just overstated. I just added 2 more for a total of 5 and its not really noticeably better. Maybe a little less shadow. I would have maybe used 6 but because of the large center overflow I only need one in mid. I would say that like most LED units you are dealing with spotlight cone patterns. Not sure how well the permanent actinic thing would work out as the light won't really blend and you would have a white area next to a blue area.
 
It will absolutely increase PAR by adding two more lights. My concern would be the spotting effect from 2 NE's running a lower color percentage than the other 3 WE's running a higher color percentage. You will end up with a spot light effect where the areas under the 2 new lights will be bluer. If anything, I would go with the WE's as opposed to the NE's or just add some good 3w royal blue strip lights with 90 or 60º optics for that purpose as you will get a much more even lighting without the spot light effect. Then if you are really concerned about intensity, add one more 360WE to your mix running the same spectrum as the other 3.

Also, keep in mind that the higher nanometer color spectrum doesn't read as well on a PAR meter as lower nm spectrums do. At about 420nm which is getting into the bluer UV spectrum, the PAR meters ability to read PAR starts dropping off. As such, you probably won't see a drastic increase on your PAR meter but that doesn't mean you haven't increased the PAR significantly under the lights. Interestingly, most of our corals get the majority of their photosynthetic radiation from 400nm and up which is bluer light. Lastly higher spectrums into the UV range (where our corals get most of their needed light) are less discernible to the human eye. As such, you could really increase intensity in that range without visually seeing a big difference which is why we need to be careful when increasing intensity and do so very slowly. These lights put out much more intensity than people realize and that is because much of the light our corals need is in the bluer to purple spectrum and higher which is less detectable to the human eye and PAR meter. That spectrum happens to be one of the strong points for the Kessils too. It's the white lighting that makes lights look "bright" however, that white light is mostly for our viewing pleasure. Instead it is primarily for aesthetics and does very little for coral growth.

I started with 3 x A360WE's on a 6ft 200g tank and the coverage ratings are just overstated. I just added 2 more for a total of 5 and its not really noticeably better. Maybe a little less shadow. I would have maybe used 6 but because of the large center overflow I only need one in mid. I would say that like most LED units you are dealing with spotlight cone patterns. Not sure how well the permanent actinic thing would work out as the light won't really blend and you would have a white area next to a blue area.
You would be surprised how much light and coverage the 360WE's put out. I have 8 of them on my 480g display which is 4'x8'x2' tall. My coverage is great from one end to the other. I have virtually no shadowing or dark spots and I have great PAR. To top it off, I max out at 80% intensity. Granted I am not keeping SPS by my LPS and soft corals thrive and the one SPS frag I put in a couple months ago is growing fine. I also have my color percentage higher so I get the appearance of a brighter light. My lights are usually about 8" off the water which helps with spread too.
 
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I started with 3 x A360WE's on a 6ft 200g tank and the coverage ratings are just overstated. I just added 2 more for a total of 5 and its not really noticeably better. Maybe a little less shadow. I would have maybe used 6 but because of the large center overflow I only need one in mid. I would say that like most LED units you are dealing with spotlight cone patterns. Not sure how well the permanent actinic thing would work out as the light won't really blend and you would have a white area next to a blue area.

Yeah, the white area next to a blue area won't work for me for sure, aesthetic wise. Gonna try it, if it doesn't work, then ill just rig them into my current daisy chain and let the Apex take over from there. I think 6 A360WE's over a 6foot display should be plenty of light. The 4 i have is decent, SPS growth is great, LPS growth too, but this way it would be 2 better! :D
 
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