Do you have any articles on that?
I like to keep my Mars Aqua pretty high off the water. Helps spread out the light/par a bit and reduces hot spots from the big diodes
I’ll look for the study again. Iirc it was done by a university.
Perfect, I was planning on hanging 16" above the water to start. What percentages and times would you recommend as a starting point?
I need to be hung high for steamy reasons
I'm not sure about timing, I kind of just turn mine before I leave the house, and turn off when I get back, probably around a 9 hour cycle. When turning the knob on, I think it starts at around 30% intensity, and does not increase in brightness until the knob is close to 50%. I generally keep blues at around 50% and colors at minimum or slightly higher until I find the look I like. If you have SPS, you will probably want to be close to max blues and 50% colors. This is my experience with the 165 watt, I would imagine the 300 watt is similar
I get really confused when I reach out for help on forums. First of all I followed what is online per the Ecotech website in addition to aqua illumination. I get on here and find a multitude of different answers telling me my settings are wrong. Life was so much easier with T5 and metal halide.
It was at least 6 months ago but I can’t say for sure that in my case the red spectrum was the problem. I was still dialing in several things at that stage but I wanted to limit potential problems so after reading the article I went straight blue.
One aspect of this hobby is that it’s not a perfected science (yet). People try to make it that but so much of the information that is out there is anecdotal and not proven science. Whenever I ask for input I always take the response with a grain of salt knowing that what may work for them may not work for me. It can be a pain when you need some finite information but it’s also what makes the hobby fun too since it can be a bit of a mystery.
