It’s not a stretch to say that over the last five years reef aquarium lighting has gotten very sophisticated; multicolor, multi-spectrum with multichannel control and very specific wavelength emission peaks of exotic colors like UV, deep red etc. Meanwhile, the only numbers we have to quantify reef aquarium lighting are PAR and photoperiod – seems like we’re not exactly in step with describing and measuring the light that we provide our reef tanks.
However a very exciting new device from a world leader in light field measurements, Ocean Optics, has the potential to really expand what is going on in our reef tanks. The WaveGo is the first truly mobile portable spectrometer which could really shed some light on the light that we give our corals and reef animals.
Let us just get it out of the way that the Ocean Optics WaveGo is $2000 and it will likely provide more data and technical information than most reefers would really care for; if you want basic light measurement for especially PAR your best bet is to use check out the Apogee PAR meter. However if you’re super curious and really want to dig deeper into lighting spectrum, PAR by wavelength, CCT & CRI then the WaveGo is pretty much the most affordable, scientific grade instrument we’ve ever even been able to consider for measuring light.
At $2000 this is not a light for the casuals, but professional installers, aquarium stores and even local clubs could afford to invest in the WaveGo to get very accurate light readings. We’re still itching to know what all this device does, how it works in conjunction with smartphone app etc. so we hope to learn more about it when it is released in January of 2019. [Ocean Optics WaveGo]
