Finally got a PAR meter, my cheap LED numbers are kinda depressing

[patrick88_ca]

Pulled the trigger on the cheap PAR meter off Amazon, not the Apogee obviously 😅 was tired of guessing why my rotala keeps going green instead of that nice red I see in everyone's tank pics.

Numbers were eye opening. My no-brand 30W LED at full blast, sitting about 20cm above the water, gives me roughly 90 PAR right at the substrate. Everywhere online says 30-50 is low light so I figured I was running medium, maybe even pushing high. Nope. And the drop off with depth is nuts, lost almost half of it by mid tank. Below that 15cm mark my tank is basically a cave lol.

So all this time I was stretching my photoperiod to 9-10 hours thinking more light = more red, and instead I just grew a nice BBA farm on my driftwood. Cut it back to 7 hours, raised the fixture a couple inches, and honestly the algae is already retreating. Wish I'd done this months ago instead of watching YouTube videos.

Also found out my "full spectrum" is like 60% blue. No wonder everything looked washed out and pale. Anyone here actually measured their Chihiros or the Week Aqua units? Curious what real numbers you're getting at substrate level. And do you trust those phone PAR apps at all or total time waste?