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Water7878
03/10/2015, 06:48 AM
I pulled the plug and ordered two radions for my 120 gallon tank. How do I know what to set the intensity of the lights to without a PAR meter?
Thanks

supervdl
03/10/2015, 06:58 AM
You should really look into getting a PAR meter. Otherwise you can only raise it slowly and see how the corals react. It depends on so many variables to determine what's the right inr nasty for you (type of coral, depth of tank, lights height above water, color setting of LEDs )

Chetna
03/10/2015, 05:26 PM
You can find out if there is some kind of local club or maybe a fish store that would rent you a par meter. Trust me worth it in the long run. At least you won't be guessing what is what.

Water7878
03/10/2015, 06:20 PM
If I can get a PAR meter how do I know what it should be set at.

Stackemdeep
03/10/2015, 08:04 PM
You can get a good starting point by reviewing this thread. Using Par meters is tricky with LED and different units require adjusting the readings so the margin of error can be quite large.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2272079

JoelA7
03/10/2015, 11:32 PM
I have ostensibly a 120 but w the sand rock overflow glass thickness it's more like 110. Depth of water to top of sand about 22". Trachyphelia on bottom. Zoas bottom and +5". Duncan +3". Ricordia and mushrooms bottom to +4". Acans +4" on rock.

Lights 40% maximum @ 14,000K

I have G3 Pros.

kmbyrnes
03/11/2015, 06:00 AM
Start low and watch your tank.
I run my pair of G1 XR30's at 40-45% after 6 months. Started at 30% and added a little each week and watched my corals. I was up to 50%, but some things didn't like that, so I backed down.

Wazzel
03/11/2015, 06:36 AM
You do not need a par meter. Start low and slowly bring up the intensity. Did you get a reef link with the units? If you did you can set an acclimation for that.

Goldndoodle
03/11/2015, 08:18 AM
Start low and watch your tank.
I run my pair of G1 XR30's at 40-45% after 6 months. Started at 30% and added a little each week and watched my corals. I was up to 50%, but some things didn't like that, so I backed down.


I'm doing similar with my BuildMyLED.com fixtures ...

I started at 30% when I put my corals in about a month ago. I'm adding between 2% - 5% per week to all of my APEX ramp points every week. Right now at 50% max (at high noon).

I also programmed some clouds on the APEX to run 3x per day for 90 minutes each time. That drops the max to 40%, min to 10% with varying up/down times per fixture (does a really nice job simulating clouds!).

All corals are looking really nice right now - they seem happy with light levels and flow in the spots they're in. I'm going to slow down the light increases now to 2% max per week, until I get to around 60% max, then slow down to 1%/week increases from 60% - 75%.