Question from a LED retard

[coachfraley]

Hello. I am new to the LED game, but I picked this light, from the less than famous aquatraders.

It is a 6x3watt led light, but the specs really don't say much else about it (I have read online that the unit uses 3 watt leds, but they are only receiving 1watt of power to each bulb). Right now I have it over my 7.5g pico, which is roughly 18x9x9. I am going to use it for high end zoas mostly.

I recently purchased a par 30 from ledtric with 90 degree optics because I thought it would be a big improvement. When I slapped it above the tank, I was surprised that it looked like a lot less light.

My question is...if it looks like a lot less light, does that necessarily mean that the PAR values are less. Could the par30 be better for the corals, even thought the tank looks darker?

Thanks for any replies, hopefully nobody laughs at me.

 

[lowbudget]

Less bright = less intense lighting. And would lead to less par. The DIY led does it have optics?

 

[coachfraley]

this is all the info available...click here doesn't say anything about the optics.

 

[jesuses]

I use a quad Evo over a 40b. Im growing sps right down the middle. Im sure you'll be fine. You might even want to set them a little higher, they put out a lot of light

 

[lurking]

It's tough to judge performance on how bright a light appears. The human eye can only see certain spectrums. That's why we don't measure lumens or Lux. We are more interested in PAR or ideally PUR.
That's why people will burn corals with LEDs. To our eyes they may appear dimmer and less powerful than a higher wattage T5, mh etc. when in reality they could be pushing a lot more PAR.

So really unless you have a PAR meter it can be tough to really know what the light is putting out since most manufacturers don't publish PAR numbers.

What kind of corals are you planning on keeping in the tank?

 

[lurking]

Sorry just saw you were planning on keeping zoas. They are low light requiring corals and will grow under even weak light. If you start to see the zoas stretching up then it may be an indication that they need more light

 

[coachfraley]

Zoas, and blasto

 

[jesuses]

You should be good. I have some zoas about 10" away from the light all the way to about 20". They're all doing good. I say keep the light.

 

[coachfraley]

Thanks for the input