I’ve heard you could use an inexpensive lux meter and covert the lux reading to par for an inexpensive DIY par reading. Anyone have any experience with this or another DIY type of par meter? Does it work for all types of lights?
I have a lux meter I bought some years ago. It’s great for checking if I have a low/high spot or checking a spot before moving a coral to see if it gets more of less light than where the coral is coming from. The issue with converting from lux to par is that the conversion factor is based on the color and the light type and it is all but impossible to guess it without using a tool to measure several other things.
The club has a Seneye PAR meter that, in theory, takes these color blending issues into account.
I started and then deleted more in this post talking about using daily alkalinity readings as your guide, but that won’t work for everyone and it assumes a somewhat stable starting point.