The standing procedure for experiments on this aquarium: control of variables, calibration, measurement, comparison, and how conclusions and limitations are written.
This document sets out how experiments on this aquarium are run. It is written as a procedure so that a reader can judge the results elsewhere on this site, and so that a future survey can be run the same way as a past one.
The PAR-specific procedure is set out in full in PAR Measurement Methodology, and is followed unchanged for every survey published here. What matters for the standing method is only that it is fixed: the same instrument, the same numbered positions, the same order, in one session.
Comparison photographs are taken at matched camera settings: the same exposure, white balance and position. An uncontrolled photograph can be made to support almost any claim about color.
This is the stated procedure for comparison work. It has not yet been exercised on a published comparison, because no second fixture has been tested. An hourly camera archive was captured under fixed conditions until August 2026, when the camera was removed; it was never a controlled photographic comparison and was never used as one. A fixture comparison would need photographs taken for that purpose.
Every write-up carries a limitations section, and it is written before the conclusion rather than after. The standing questions asked of each test are: what was not controlled, what was not recorded, how many times was this measured, and what would a skeptical reader challenge first.
Limitations that emerge only after publication are added to the document rather than left out.
Planned work is published before it is run, with its question and hypothesis stated, so that the record shows what was intended rather than only what succeeded. Planned entries carry no invented figures and are clearly marked as not yet run.