Par or not to par that is the question

[SaltCreeps]

Please read evils post just below



Yesterday another reefer and i were talking about leds and he told me that the PAR was no good with leds. my response to him was Par is over rated not that it is totally unimportant just that it was made to help land plants grow not corals. corals and plants have had hundreds of thousands of year(minimum) to evolve from each other and use light in similar and different ways. Corals for one use a much wider spectrum of light from 6,500k-30,000k and most plants use mainly 6,500k-14,000k as they can absorb larger quantities of this high energy light. basically corals use a wider range of light than what a par meter reads making it a useful tool but not a reefs law. It is also stated in a few articles that we are yea to totally understand the full spectrum of light that is used by the symbiotic algae in corals for there are so many, and i would have to guess a lack of funds to to the project thoroughly
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Please read these
[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetically_active_radiation[/ame]
http://sa.rochester.edu/jur/issues/spring2005/li.pdf
Quotes of interest
Photosynthetically active radiation, often abbreviated PAR, designates the spectral range (wave band) of solar radiation from 400 to 700 nanometers that photosynthetic organisms are able to use in the process of photosynthesis. This spectral region corresponds more or less with the range of light visible to the human eye.Other living organisms, such as green bacteria, purple bacteria and Heliobacteria, can exploit solar light in slightly extended spectral regions, such as the near-infrared
In “clear” seawater, PAR reduces to 1 percent of its incident value within 100 m. This metric is called the euphotic depth. Spectral distribution plots show that due to slight turbidity changes in different waters, the euphotic depth can extend from over 200 m to less than 40 m. This depth range is labeled as the euphotic zone.6 Because of coral’s PAR requirement, we may conclude growth promotion is the greatest in clearer waters (greater euphotic zone). Smith and Baker conducted research on the inherent optical properties of natural waters.
Inherent Optical Properties of Various Seawaters
The amount of photosynthesis available radiation (PAR) and harmful radiation are responsible for a coral’s health. PAR consists of wavelengths between approximately 0.4 to 0.7 microns. Because no precise data on the action spectrum of different corals (more precisely their symbiotic zooxanthellae) are known, we cannot yet quantitatively correlate dynamics in a coral varietie’s response to different wavelengths within both for the clearest natural seawaters.