Anyone have a PAR meter?

sns26 · Post by **sns26** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:12 pm

I'm thinking of messing around with some DIY led stuff, and wondering if anyone has a PAR meter I could borrow at some point. If not, maybe we should consider buying one for the club...?

hbosman · Post by **hbosman** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 3:31 pm

I would be interested in borrowing or renting a PAR meter as well. If the club is interested in buying one, I would gladly contribute.

fjf888 · Post by **fjf888** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 4:59 pm

+1 here as well.

chris_todd · Post by **chris_todd** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 5:22 pm

If anyone in the club has a PAR meter, they're not fessing up to it, LOL. This has been asked several times in the last few months. I know I was one of the requesters. I'd love to use one to measure some of my terraria, as well as some of my tanks, but it just isn't economical for me to drop the cash on something I'll only use once and probably never again, particularly since they are not cheap.

I suspect other folks are in a similar boat. So while I'm not sure whether this is the kind of thing that would make a good club asset, or how we would handle the logistics of having people "borrow" it, I will bring it up as a topic of discussion with the board.

hbosman · Post by **hbosman** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 2:19 pm

So, has it been discussed with the board yet about a club purchase of a PAR meter?

chris_todd · Post by **chris_todd** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 2:36 pm

Yes, we did discuss it, and came to the conclusion that this might be something the club could do. But then I got sidetracked by life, and did not revisit the issue.

The hanging question at the time was what the cost would be, and since none of us really knew what made a good PAR meter, we weren't sure.

Henry, do you have any particular model recommendations? From my cursory web searches, it looks like Apogee Instruments MQ-200 is a good model, and is about $335. Does anyone else have models they can recommend?

hbosman · Post by **hbosman** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 1:52 pm

The Apogee MQ 200 is the one mentioned on Plant sights and Reef sights. I so far, haven't found any recommendation for another brand. The Apogee MQ 100 wouldn't be good because the sensor is built directly into the unit itself. Not very practical for our use. The MQ 200 has a potted (sealed in epoxy) sensor on a cable.

http://www.aquariumspecialty.com/apogee ... -par-meter

chris_todd · Post by **chris_todd** » Wed May 04, 2011 1:59 pm

OK, so the MQ-200 seems to be the industry standard for PAR meters, but for other reasons, I was looking at the Milwaukee Instruments SM700 light meter (which does not appear to be a PAR meter, simply a Lux meter), which is about a hundred bucks at Foster Smith Aquatics:
http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/p ... atid=14821

My question is this: for our needs, will a simple Lux meter work, or do we really need a PAR meter?

Jim Miller · Post by **Jim Miller** » Wed May 04, 2011 6:38 pm

Lux is tuned for your eye response.

PAR is tuned for what a plant uses.

They're different.

I don't think a lux meter would be useful if what you want to measure is the amount of radiation usable by plants.

Jim

ingg · Post by **ingg** » Wed May 04, 2011 8:15 pm

Jim has it right.

lux meters are heavily tuned towards greens - what we see.

So, examples of the difference.

A lux meter is going to pick up huge amounts of light out of a halide meant for parking lots - which is all the wrong yellowish light for a tank. Lots of light to our eyes, junk for plants.

On the other hand, I'm going to pick on a fixture I know of. Sean has this crazy funky LED fixture. The light, to my eyes, is pretty hideous, a semi-dim purplish almost looking light (though it looks good with just one regular fixture alongside it). Thing grows plants like crazy, it is tuned to PAR, not lux.

Anyone have a PAR meter?

Anyone have a PAR meter?

PAR meter

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