So I had a plan for this weekend………..but now I’m not so sure.
Here’s what’s going on. When I upgraded my lighting, I went from 4 x 48” bulbs, to 2 x 60” + 4 x 48”. I also staggered the 48” bulbs to provide more coverage from side to side on my 60” tank, and lowered the lights about 2” to get them closer to the substrate.
If you followed this journal then, you saw I had a dramatic increase in PAR (center front substrate 48 to 135 PAR). I control three banks of two bulbs, so back, center and front. I’ve been toying lately to see how long I could run all six bulbs for, without an outbreak of algae. This limit turned out to be right about 4 hours.
So that got me to thinking, and I decided to borrow Hoppy’s PAR meter again (thanks Hoppy!), and raise the lights back up as far as I could into the canopy, to see if that would lower my PAR, and then I could run all six bulbs for a longer period.
So this morning I set about taking some readings with 4 bulbs (back/front), and with all 6 bulbs (back/center/front) to set a baseline before I moved things around. Well, I was pretty surprised at my readings.
Here’s a picture of what I had then. I didn’t take a picture of the current configuration, as that would mean removing the canopy, which is a bit of work. I have changed a few bulbs since then, as noted below.
Top to bottom bulbs, left side what is in the picture, right side what is in there today.
Giesemann Super Flora 54w………….Giesemann Super Flora 54w
Zoo Med Ocean Sun 10,000K 54w…Truelumen Flora 54w
ATI Purple Plus 54w…………………….….ATI Purple Plus 54w
TrueLumen Flora 54w………………….…Plantmax 3000K 54w
Giesemann Tropic 80w……………………Giesemann Tropic 80w
Giesemann Super Flora 80w………….Giesemann Super Flora 80w
The biggest change is the Plantmax 3000K. @
burr740 told me that bulb has tremendous PAR, and now I am sure he is right. The readings with all six bulbs on now are pretty much thru the roof. Below is a picture of the tank with the readings with 4 bulbs vs 6 bulbs, at various places around the tank.
As I looked at these numbers, I began to think that I probably don’t need to run the center set of bulbs at all? The PAR reading with just the 4 bulbs seems to be high enough to grow about anything. At least I think so, and was curious as to other opinions? So for now my plan is I am not going to raise the lights, and just run the 4 bulbs for a month or so and see how things go.
Since I have the center fixtures already mounted, I am considering buying an Actinic & a very, very red bulb with low PAR (Powerveg 660??) to run in them. Run those maybe just an hour or two a day, and mostly to see the effect it would have on color when taking pictures.
So I have two thoughts from this morning. #1 is having a PAR meter available is a handy thing. I’m thinking now I may just buy one. And #2 is that bulbs have various levels of PAR, and guessing what your values are is just that……..guessing.
And one more thing. All that mumbo jumbo I posted about collectoritis……well I just couldn’t resist and picked up a few Erio Polaris. I saw them in a journal on TPT, and one thing led to another, and yada yada yada I have more plants.