Kessil

LFS Par Meter

Not that I know of. We have 2 for supporting members to borrow though.
I saw that. I would rather not have to wait two months to borrow one though. I recently got the Nanobox Tide for my ten gallon and need to figure out if it's enough light for the SPS corals.
 
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How old's your tank? What lights are you using? Size of tank? Parameter's?

PAR is not a magical formula. Lots of SPS growers grow well at 250 even, How stable is your tank day-to-day?
 
How old's your tank? What lights are you using? Size of tank? Parameter's?

PAR is not a magical formula. Lots of SPS growers grow well at 250 even, How stable is your tank day-to-day?
Standard ten gallon tank measuring 20x12x8 inches. The distance from the sand bed to the surface of the water is only 9 inches, so pretty shallow. No sump, no protein skimmer, just an Aquamax 50 HOB. The light is a NanoBox Tide Plus M running the mixed reef preset NanoBox recommends. There's not a whole lot of data on it, compared to more popular lights. It's certainly more powerful than my last light, but I have also read that the light is very underpowered.

Salinity 1.025, temperature 78, nitrates 20. I have never tested Calcium and Alkalinity, so I don't know if those are stable or not. I use Reef Crystals, which I've read keeps levels fairly stable. I don't think I have enough corals to drastically change Calcium and Alkalinity levels.
 
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I’m not aware of an LFS with a PAR meter to lend/rent.

Bulk reef supply is the only PAR meter rental service I’ve heard of.

Joining BAR as a supporting member and using ours is cheaper and comes with lots of other benefits. 2 months is like the blink of an eye in this hobby.
 
About two and a half months. I got the NanoBox just last week. Before that, I had a PAR38 bulb.

One: Even corals put into a mature and established tank will often not grow at all under the best of conditions for six months or longer while they acclimate. Think of it like this -- corals are animals and when they are put into a new environment they go into a survival mode check. Growing takes a lot of energy and the coral has to "decide" if it can spare that energy or needs to retain it to make sure it is strong enough to survive in this new place.

Two: Most systems won't grow coral well, or at all, until the system is mature. This is often 6 months to a year. This is especially true in a small reef. There's no way your parameters in such a short time are stable enough for the coral to start growing. If your corals are surviving at this point your doing fine. Don't worry about growth. Your only goal is to keep things stable and your focus should be learning how to do that. Getting your hands on a PAR meter right now could be worse than not having one simply because a PAR meter will probably mean your screwing around with stability again. In ten weeks of running a small tank you've already drastically changed lighting for your corals. More changes could easily make things worse. Be patient.

Three: Be patient.

Four: Get your tank to the six month mark and then start working on growth and par meters.
 
By the way -- the new tank I'm setting up shortly won't even see it's first corals for the first 8 weeks at least -- and then I don't expect any real growth for months after and it will be running with every bell and whistle known to mankind.

Be patient.
 
It’s been a month since the last post. How are your corals doing @Timmayyy?
They are doing better. I recently tested my Calcium and Alkalinity and they are depleting too fast to be within an acceptable range between water changes, so I'm about to start two part dosing. I picked up some Seachem Fusion and will be manually dosing it, after testing of course :)
 
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