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- It's BRStv Reef FAQ Wednesday and today we answer,
how do I keep my LED lights set up right?
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Hey I'm Ryan with BRStv Reef FAQs where every week
we do our best to help you guys enjoy your tanks
and find new ways to explore the hobby.
We do that with quick, straight to the point answers
to your questions.
Today it's time to get the PAR or intensity set up right.
These intensity sliders range from zero to 100%,
means nothing in terms of actual measurement of intensity
or how to set up your lighting schedule.
So let's solve that.
This is becoming a tired story, but all the same true.
Getting lighting right used to be as easy as plugging
in a bank of proven T5's or halide's into the wall
and calling it a day.
That simple act of knowing lighting
would never be an issue that prevents you
from having a successful tank.
Now we have super high powered
LEDs and intensity sliders with all kinds of adjustments.
It's just not the same plug and play results.
Partially because the human eye
is a terrible judge of brightness, and even worse at PAR.
Our eye's can measure brightness to some degree
but the auto iris to control brightness an worse yet much
of the spectrum that we perceive as brightness is green,
which does not contribute much to PAR.
If you doubt that, look at the tank spots directly
under the lights which might be 600 PAR and the corners
of the tank might be 30 PAR.
You can decide for yourself
if you can visually scale it enough to adjust for it.
Better yet, I've shown people tanks with 25, 50, 75,
and 100% intensities on the sliders.
And most people can see the difference
when it's extreme as 75%.
But very few at 50 and almost no one at 25.
And your zero people would be able
to visually identify the actual PAR numbers
anywhere in the tank.
So these are the three options for doing this right.
And regardless of how you do it,
I think the entire community will agree
that they're presented
from the lowest percentage chance of success
to the highest success rates.
At first just wing it and adjust
the intensity of the lights until it just looks
or feels right.
In this case success is going to be based
on one of three things.
You're a super experienced reefer
and you can just do this intuitively.
In which case I doubt you're actually watching this video.
Secondarily, you may have just slid around the sliders
until they look good and got lucky.
Lastly, you selected the right or balanced
option for your tank and desires the right tool
for the right job is just inherently more difficult
to set up catastrophically wrong.
Getting the right option means
getting past the PAR's horsepower fallacy
where more is better or marketing hype.
With LEDs you're 20 times as likely to kill the coral
with too much light as not enough and is just true.
So some of the options
which at the suggested mounting heights
seem to be balanced better for the application
are the media models of most ranges.
Like the Radion XR15, AI Hydra 26, Kessil 360-X.
All those capable of producing anything
from a softie polyp tank, to a full blown SPS tank
without easily overdoing it.
The higher powered options
just take a more advanced approach
to getting the spread and intensity right.
There's just a lot of advantages
to 2 Hydra 26s over 1 Hydra 52.
Ease of intensity settings and more even coverage
are both common reasons to go this way.
Okay what's the second method
for adjusting the intensity or PAR in your lights.
This is a giant leap forward in terms of success rates.
It's ask someone.
There's no shortage of successful reefers
with your coral type selected tank
and selected lights on Reef to Reef.
And our Facebook group #AskBRStv.
If you ask in either place you can often get 10 people
with near your exact set up in a matter of minutes.
Share their schedule.
Mission accomplished.
Just make sure you see their results
and are happy with them prior.
Okay so some of you probably already guessed a third path
or the highest percentage path
to success is pick a PAR goal and measure it
with a PAR meter.
Despite being one of the highest percentage
or best ways to do this, using a PAR meter
was probably one of the least common methods in the past,
just because a meter cost so much.
However, you can now rent them at BRS and I can say
with near certainty there isn't a single other place
you can put 50 bucks and have a more direct impact
on the quality results, as well as peace of mind
that the lighting will never again be your issue.
Based on our own experiences and the information WWC
has shared with us on the tanks
for an SPS Acropora dominant tank,
the most common safe range is 200 to 300 PAR
in as much of the tank as possible.
There will be peaks and valleys right under the lights
in the corners of the tank.
But with the PAR meter you can now just set the intensity
right but also space the lights to get the right coverage.
In this case I think it's wise to print out a photo
of the tank and then write on it the PAR numbers
in various spots as you make changes.
Similar to how we documented the PAR
in all the WWC episodes.
This will help you with lighting
placement, intensity settings,
and ultimately coral placement later.
You may want to move some corals around
and see how they do in different lighting intensities.
And documenting this will allow you to do the down the road.
With most LPS you'll lower to demand tanks,
I'd say the range is 50 to 100 PAR.
Often lower the better.
PAR is absolutely not horsepower with LPS.
Getting the PAR that low with LEDs
can actually be a challenge.
And again, tough to do by the eye.
You might be surprised by how some popular
lights need to be turned down to 25 to 30%
to achieve those numbers.
Okay, so once you get the right PAR number
or intensity sliders set the rest of the schedule
is really related to the length of the photo period.
This is my direct advice.
If you're gonna push the limits of PAR and try to run
at the highest PAR ranges for your particular coral.
You're better off with a shorter photo period
like nine hours.
So if you're running a more conservative or lower range
for PAR for your corals 12 hours is probably better.
This is both while providing the nutritional requirements
for the corals,
as well as providing rest or proper dark time
to free themselves of toxic bi products
of the photosynthetic process.
As the importance of ramp time,
I'd say it's nearly all visual appeal
to have the sun rise and sun set effects.
Well it's true the sun rises and falls in the sky
with varying intensity.
And you can simulate that in the tank.
In the ocean the corals are actually protecting themselves
from the sun with slower photosynthesis rates
most of the peak hours of the day.
So feel free to ramp them up or down over 30
or even as short as 15 minutes.
Also feel free to stretch it out
if You'd like a longer viewing period.
My personal suggestion is a 12 hour schedule
that lets you enjoy the tank for a longer period of time.
Either moderate PAR for most of that 12 hours,
or more intense PAR for nine hours
and then an hour and a half of fairly low PAR
on both ends of that.
Okay so there's one thing we didn't discuss here.
That's spectrum and what all those individual sliders do
and that's because we answered that question last week.
Spectrum matters, and there's no debate on that front.
So if you missed it, it's in your tanks best interest
to check that one out.
We'll see you next Wednesday with the next batch
of BRStv Reef FAQs.
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