I’m using the par meter to figure out a good mounting height for the lights. I currently have them 8” over the water running at 30% on one of the preset spectrums from Ecotech. I get peak of 400-450 par at the surface under the light and about 80-100 at the front of the tank in the low flow area. I’m pretty happy with these results.
I think I might raise the lights up more in order to allow me to increase the intensity on the light and hopefully have a better more even distribution instead of having hot spots. It is a little weird for me to have such a powerful light at only 1/3 it’s capacity, but I’m not gonna bleach my corals just to feel better about the light intensity. WWC mounts close to 16” in order to have more even spread of par but my tank is probably too narrow to go that high without the light primarily illuminating my floor. I do like that at the higher mounting height I can angle my blue led bars to prevent shadowing.
I might have to deal with light spill by making some type of cover around the hanging lights to limit the spill at the source of the light, it’s a bit bright when sitting on my couch. I should be able to easily attach something to the existing aluminum mounting