Dana and John, I would like to thank you, and both Mr. and Mrs. M. Clark for giving me this opportunity to interview you and be given a tour of your facilities. I appreciate the fact that you showed me "everything" and did not place any restrictions on areas that were off-limits and that you did not restrict me either from taking photos of whatever I wanted.
This speaks highly for your company.
I was extremely impressed with the cleanliness, well laid out systems, laboratory and equipment, instrumentation used, methodologies applied and so on. I have rarely, if ever, seen an operation of this caliber. No wonder your success rate is as high as it is.
Not only were the "trimmings" there and present to a degree far greater than what one would expect, but the results of all your efforts were visible in the success rate you are obtaining with the techniques you are utilizing and implementing. Over the years, and you know that I have been around for a while, I have seen hundreds of pet stores and hundreds of breeding facilities. Yours is miles ahead of where every one else is. I say that because I have seen it and am able to compare. Nothing else even comes close to what you have in Cleveland TN.
I was a real pleasure meeting Mr. and Mrs. Clark and getting to know them better. Thank you for your very kind attention and the time you took to make sure that I had access to everything I wanted to see and document. Thank you too for letting me interview Dana and John.
It is really gratifying to see that with the right approach you have set the hobby one large step further: propagating corals and fish in captivity with a degree of success that you can truly be proud of. I wish you all the best in your endeavors and am convinced that once more hobbyists and stores become familiar with what The Aquatic Wildlife Company is all about, you will be recognized as one of the leaders, if not "the" leader, in the advancement of the hobby.
For those who read this and wish to visit, which I strongly suggest and highly recommend, the phone number is (423) 559 9000. This coral propagation and research facility is definitely worth visiting. If you do so you will be amazed by the quality and diversity of livestock being offered for sale.
Interview Part I
Dana, in your presentation at the Western Conference in Las Vegas you gave a lecture on lighting and on PAR, a summary of which can be accessed from Summary of Dana's Talk in Vegas. Could you briefly explain how this is different from the way in which hobbyists have been looking at lighting in the past.
It is certainly my pleasure to be here and to be able to discuss some of the concepts introduced during that conference, and answer other questions you may have.
P.A.R or PAR, stands for photosynthetically active or available radiation. What it is, in simpler terms, is a measure of the energy that plants and algae use for photosynthesis in the 400 to 700 nanometer wavelength range. It is, actually, a term that coral and plant biologists have used to describe the energy that is used in photosynthesis. Unlike other measurements, it allows a researcher to compare apples to apples when measuring lighting efficiency. It is by far a better measurement than any other ones that one finds mentioned in hobby literature and allows for comparisons that are valid and can be compared against each other.
The summary of my talk lists a number of light sources that are used in the hobby and gives more details on how each of these lighting sources actually performs in terms of providing corals with a certain amount of PAR. I acquired a PAR meter to be able to study the many types of lights now on the market and actually measure what their PAR was, as opposed to what anecdotal evidence about these lights would have us believe.
The major difference between the two year research project that I undertook were all done measuring PAR of artificial lights. That is unique in as much as most studies performed were done in the field, using the sun as the lighting source and measuring its PAR in various areas, depths, regions and under various conditions.
The results of this study are vast and I have only briefly touched on them during my presentation in Vegas. Let's face it, in less than an hour one cannot cover very much. Nevertheless I was able to draw the participant's attention to this new way of looking at lighting energy and its importance for the corals we keep in our aquariums. To my knowledge such a study has never been undertaken and I am still analyzing the results to draw more conclusions from them.
PAR will in my opinion soon become the standard way of looking at light and will be used more and more frequently. It is a far better way of gauging lighting and its efficiency than measuring lux or looking at lumens, or even going just by the spectrum of a bulb. We should not overlook that the spectrum changes, rapidly for some bulbs and less rapidly for others. What may be an excellent lighting source when new, may not be so after a short period of time. I have given some details on these changes in the summary that you have already added to your web site.
If I understand what you are saying correctly, PAR is a much better way to look at lighting efficiency and efficacy, than just looking at the spectrum. In a way you narrow the wavelengths emitted down to those that are most beneficial to the corals and pay attention to those when deciding on which lighting is to be preferred.
Yes that is correct. It is my contention that we should concentrate more on the effective intensity (PAR) than on the spectrum itself or alone. With the array of lights now available it becomes more important to focus our attention on those bulbs that provide the energy (also called photon irradiance level) that corals can effectively utilize. 10 K and 20 K Kelvin degree bulbs can certainly be used in some applications but I find that out of all bulbs now on the market the one I prefer is the 6500 Kelvin one.
It has excellent PAR readings and corals react very positively to the radiation emitted by that bulb. Our focus should be more on the amount of photosynthetically useful radiation than just on lux. If the PAR is low even though the lux is high, corals will not benefit as much from such a light than if the opposite were true.
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