XR15 on 5-10 gallons -percentage?

[printerdown01]

Hey all, waiting on a PAR meter (will be a bit as I’m number X in the lineup). Wondering what % those of you with 5-10 gallon tanks are dialing it into and how far off the water you are keeping it?? I’m running a 5.5 gallon display so the depth would be similar to most 5 to 10 gallon tanks.

 

Currently at 30% and 9.5” off the water. Running a diffuser and AB+ mode. Feeling like I am under lighting my tank. Just set it to 50% with a 4 week ramp up... will be watching but wanted to see what y’all were doing. 

Also currently battling Dino’s thanks to my fuge working to well and keeping my nutrients too low. First time that’s happened.

[Clown79]

On my old 5.5g I ran 1 ai prime and it never got higher than 50%, I fried a few corals under 50%.

[printerdown01]

Thanks!! What were you keeping and what fried? 

[Mirepa]

fwiw I'm running the Hydra 32HD on my Fluval Spec V and have it under ~15%. Currently ~7" above water. App says I'm doing ~10w. 

 

Just got the light a few days ago and only have a few zoas at the bottom. They appear to be doing well thus far. Will see how this goes and adjust.

[mcarroll]

On 1/5/2020 at 1:36 PM, printerdown01 said:

Hey all, waiting on a PAR meter (will be a bit as I’m number X in the lineup). Wondering what % those of you with 5-10 gallon tanks are dialing it into and how far off the water you are keeping it?? I’m running a 5.5 gallon display so the depth would be similar to most 5 to 10 gallon tanks.

 

Currently at 30% and 9.5” off the water. Running a diffuser and AB+ mode. Feeling like I am under lighting my tank. Just set it to 50% with a 4 week ramp up... will be watching but wanted to see what y’all were doing. 

Also currently battling Dino’s thanks to my fuge working to well and keeping my nutrients too low. First time that’s happened.

A standard 5 Gallon is only 10" high, less the sand bed and less whatever else the corals are sitting on.  Aka Shallow!  😊

 

Seems like you'd want something like a Kessil A80  or a little Current USA strip on a tank that small....kinda asking for trouble (or waste at the very least) to run such a giant LED over it.

 

IMO, consider lowering the light so there's little or no wasted light over the side of the tank.  (Lower intensity to compensate -- don't increase the light intensity on the tank.)

 

Once it's in place, anything over 14,000 lux at the surface should be fine.  Up to 30,000 lux would be pretty dang bright and is around the minimum level that clams apparently need.  There may be some gorgonians that require as much as 50,000 lux, but that's less confirmed, and may only apply to 1 or 2 genera.

 

Lux?

 

Consider buying a lux meter so you have a light meter of your own.  $7 and up for a decent handheld unit.  I paid $12 for mine....it's got the sensor on a cord. Both styles have their benefits.

 

The Gear You Didn't Know You Needed section on my blog has my (uncharacteristically brief) article about lux meters if you wanna check that out.

 

If you ever get the PAR meter you're in line for, you can use it to callibrate your lux meter so you can get accurate PAR readings from it if you want. 

 

I suspect you'll stop caring much about PAR if you aren't anchored to a PAR meter though....it's pretty much overkill for what we're doing.  Measuring in lux is so easy and so cheap and it works just as well for us.  Even if you do continue caring about PAR units, as I said, you can continue measuring in PAR with your lux meter once you do the calibration with the PAR meter. 

 

You can also do rough lux-to-PAR conversions with a simple calculation:

2,000 PAR = 100,000 lux = Peak sunlight at the water surface in the tropics.  100,000/2,000 = 50.  So if you see a PAR reading of 350 somewhere, you can calculate that to be close to 17,500 lux.  Vis versa, if you measure 14,000 lux at the top of your water surface, that would be about 280 PAR.  That's all the calculation I generally ever do if I'm curious about making a PAR comparison.  If I thought I was comparing with a setup that was WAY MORE BLUE than mine then I'd probably calculate on a slightly higher conversion factor of 60 or 70.  That would make 14,000 lux no lower than 200 PAR.  I've never seen a light generate a conversion factor higher than 70....most are closer to 50....some are even as low as 40.  That's why I generally stick with 50, which is the conversion factor for sunlight.  😎