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Tools you need when purchasing your Aquarium lighting

Just to share with you guys something, a handy tool when you purchase your aquarium lighting. Download any lux meter from playstore or appstore to your phone. What you need to do is position your phone 12" or 24" facing your current lighting, measure the light intensity. Screenshot the result and you can go ahead to compare the light intensity with the new lighting at your LFS. Make sure to use the same distance and take note of the surrounding ambient lighting so as to not give you a false result.

Plenty to choose from

With this tool you can now estimate if the new light will be more powerful or less powerful according to the lux meter. I've tried a few apps and they are all similarly accurate in measuring the light intensity. It is a simple tool that make life much easier instead of judging your light from the wattage shown or with your eyes which is 99% inaccurate unless you are an old timer photographer. During my photographing days we do not have digital, we were shooting film and slide and lux meter was one of the tool we had in the bag. Overtime we get to fairly accurate when reading the ambient light.  .

screenshot your reading to compare to the new lighting.

BTW after using this app you will notice that wattage are a poor way to judge the intensity of light produce.

cheers

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