Cody
Vice President
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Content Moderator
Board Member
Supporting Member
I think that as a community, we need to move past PAR as a sufficient source of information of how to gauge the light needs of our corals. If I was telling you how to bake a a lasagna and I told you that it needs to be cooked at 350 degrees, then what would your next question be? Of course, it would be "how long?" Par is a measure of the amount of light, or radiation (hence the "R" in photo-synthetically active radiation) per second that are hitting a given surface area. As you will note while using the PAR meters that are a wonderful perk of being a supporting member of MARSH, there's a constantly changing number for your readings. This is due to the water surface, etc changing, but it's trying to give you the best quote of radiation per second. Again, what the meter is trying to do is to calculate how much light is hitting that meter per second. It's telling you the temperature in the oven. We also have to look at the longevity in which the lasagna, or our corals, are being cooked. DLI (Daily Light Interval) takes into consideration both parts of that recipe. The basic calculation is {(par*hours*minutes*seconds)/1000000}. At that point, we can all start making accurate comparisons.
Longer photo-periods with lower lights, and shorter-photo periods with higher lights can produce the same amount of radiation hitting the corals within a 24 hours period. At the end of the day, the coral received the same sum of radiation, but what differences can these different light schedules make? I'd have to find the article, but Ecotech seemed to find that the difference was coloration and algae growth. The higher intensity, shorter photo-period produced less algae. I'll look for that video tomorrow and link it. Anywho, I just wanted everyone to start thinking about this when you're using the MARSH par meters. Find your DLI. Report whats working for you in the DLI results and let's get more insight into how to cook these lasagnas.
Longer photo-periods with lower lights, and shorter-photo periods with higher lights can produce the same amount of radiation hitting the corals within a 24 hours period. At the end of the day, the coral received the same sum of radiation, but what differences can these different light schedules make? I'd have to find the article, but Ecotech seemed to find that the difference was coloration and algae growth. The higher intensity, shorter photo-period produced less algae. I'll look for that video tomorrow and link it. Anywho, I just wanted everyone to start thinking about this when you're using the MARSH par meters. Find your DLI. Report whats working for you in the DLI results and let's get more insight into how to cook these lasagnas.
Attachments
Last edited: