Nov. 2 Meeting

[Coralfreak]

Announcement:

The next meeting of the Greater Iowa Reef Society will be held on Sunday Nov. 2 @ 2pm. The meeting will be held at the Iowa City Public Library meeting Room A. The library is located at 123 S Linn. For driving directions, click on the following link, it will take you directly to MapQuest where you can enter your address and MapQuest will draw you a map to the library.

Directions (http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?country=US&addtohistory=&address=123+S+Linn+&city=Iowa+City&state=IA&zipcode=&homesubmit=Get+Map)

The meeting will consist of a discussion and demonstration of MH lighting. This will be a great time, I hope to see everyone there, and hopefully some new people as well. If you have any questions about the meeting or the club please contact any of the officers. Contact information is available on the web site at www.greateriowareefsociety.com.

Allen

[HOC]

Could everyone planning to attend the meeting bring something to contribute? It can be lighting to test.(We'll have a lux meter) Some info from a book you have, an experiment you've done, or something found here on RC. Anything will work, and the more the better. We'd like to get as many questions and answers as possible out of this meeting.

Also if anyone has access to a Par meter, it would be great to have. ( maybe one of you college students??)It's a rather expensive piece of equipment . We hope to have one eventually if not at this meeting.

I look forward to seeing everyone again.
Thanks...Chris

[Coralfreak]

Minutes of Nov. 2 Meeting

2:10pm Meeting called to order

2:15 Old business discussed, web page hosting has been arranged by Chris Gray.

New business, possible involvment with the reef club at Iowa State University

2:25 Treasurer's report

2:30 Lighting Demo by Chris Groves

The lighing demo consisted of a discussion of PAR vs LUX as a measurement of lighting. PAR(photosynthetically active radiation) is a measurement of the light utilized by organizms to perform photsynthesis, essentially the light our corals need to survive and thrive. Here is an interesting link that may help somewhat with this:

http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/1999/june/product/default.asp

We were unable to obtain a PAR meter so a LUX meter was used instead, another article of interest.

http://www.animalnetwork.com/fish2/aqfm/1998/june/product/default.asp

The essence of this article explains that while a LUX meter is not the exact information we are looking for, they are very useful for comparisons

We tested three 400W MH bulbs on two different ballasts, results are below

MH bulb Ballast LUX reading
400W, 20,000K Radium PFO HQI 152
400W, 20,000K "XM" PFO HQI 150
400W, 10,000K Ushio PFO HQI 330
400W, 20,000K Radium Blueline E-ballast 97
400W, 20,000K "XM" Blueline E-ballast 95
400W, 10,000K Ushio Blueline E-ballast N/A

(Note: For some odd reason the Ushio 10K would not fire on the Blueline ballast)

Interesting result is that the electronic ballast while more energy efficient, produces a lower light output than the PFO HQI.

Allen

[Atticus]

Do we have a new topic for the next meeting and a time and place?

[HOC]

Won't be until Jan, because of Christmas. We'll probably post for some suggestions of what people would like to do at the next meeting. We're always open for suggestions and Ideas!! It will be in DesMoines next time.