Grow Lights - Opinions

Does anyone here have any experience using LED grow lights? I have an Ebb & Flo 3x3 in a Hydro Hut, 400w HPS.... I was reading that the LED's are much better and are not nearly as easy for the feds to detect with Thermal Imaging and even teh cost of running it.

I emailed a person selling them on Ebay, and he told me that 2 RED and 1 BLUE is enought for a 4sqft setup, and produces the same effect as a 600w light.

I only do the 12/12 cycle, and friend does the clones and veg stage...

I am totally new to this, so any info would be great.

-Spliffy

I bealive that the price of the LED light systems is still a bit expensive for the results it delivers...i´m checking a couple of grows using LEDS and i must say that so far im not impressed with it...don´t get me wrong LEDS work wonders for ur electricity bill but after all things considered its not the extra 30$ at the end of the month that make up for the yield i get using HID bulbs..so until the technology of LED grow systems is well developed in a way that can be cheap but also productive im sticking with my HPS and my fluoros....

I don't think LED units are quite there yet for flowering. And maybe 3 arrays of LEDs would fit that area, but not just 3 diodes. I would not take advice from an ebay seller.

And UV light is not in HPS, only MH. That's why I run a UV tube in my flowering room.

HTH

dank what do you mean when you say not enough uv`s.acording to what i understand of light spectrum the plants can`t see Ultra Violet just as we can`t.i`m not disagreeing wth you i just don`t understand what you mean.

as far as led grows all but 1 i`ve seen were grower error, done but growers who needed to work on their skills just a bit more,it was more problems with other things and not the light.the 1 that i saw that did well,but it took more than just just 1 light bar it was more like 6 or 8 of them.

hopefully the pic will load 1st try at loading 1.

You need a full spectrum (overlapping spectrum) in order to get full genetic expression from a plant, these genetic expressions are activated by hormonal changes with in the plant. How are these hormonal changes activated with in the plant? But different parts of the light sprctrum.
UV is needed more in Vegitative growth than it is in flowering.

Spring and summer time are times of the year that produce more UV light than anyother time in the year. Plants put on more Vegitative growth during these months. Where as in in fall and winter months less UV light is produced.
When does most of the flowering (seed production and release) happen in Marijuana? During the late summer and yearly fall when the vegitative hormones are no longer needed.

Remember That when we are growing indoors we are trying to duplicate nature to a certain extent.

I have notice that when Plants have had full growth in a LED cab, they lack the strength in the stalks and tend to have lack luster results.

Sorry, Man, but it doesn't have anything to do with UV. And those hormones are affected by changes in light, not particularly UV.
Many growers grow solely with HPS, as it has more lumens/watt. Since HPS doesn't emit any UV those plants never receive any.

Show me a spectrum analysis on HPS before you commit yourself to that statement.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid that I've already said it, so it's up to you to prove me wrong. And how'd you know that I was from Missouri?

I'm no mewbie grower here, started growing when I was 15 and turned 44 last friday.

Metal Halide on the other hand does put out some of the UV spectrum.

Please explain (getting this subject back on track) to me as to why the plants that I have seen grown in LED cabs are so scrawny and produce very little.
From the plants I have see under LED, you could do better growing in a computer cab under compact fluors.
My theory would be that certain hormones are not being activated within the plant, and would be due to something missing in the light spectrum being provided. All I am saying that plants need low levels of UV light in order to complete their cycles.

splify to answer your ? the ebay guy lied.....you need aleast 8(most likely more)of those to even come close to a 600w hid.and they are missing some light that you need.

dank your right there is activity in the uv range of the spectrum,myself i`ve heard that all you needed to do was to be inside the 400-700nm and you can grow.which you can but some of the new home build led`s are going to a 10% uv light around 300nm which is in the uv spectrum.they claim this helps with root rot and some other problems they were having.none of the company built lights have made this move yet.

potroast your proved wrong go to eyehortilux.com and look at the spectrum of the hps lights and you`ll find that they do go into the uv spectrum.

Thanks Jake, I didn't meant to sound like a smart ass potroast, But I think I have a few years on you when it comes to growing. Been doing this for 29 years. Started growing weed when I was 15 and I'm 44 now.

Thanks for this guys. It was at the EYE Lighting site that I learned years ago that the sodium lamp output doesn't have UV. I'll have to go look again. At the time, I wanted to see if the enhanced spectrum HPS lamps, like Hortilux, had any UV, and EYE told me no, only MH has it.

And Texas, glad to have you here, but, as they say, you haven't even been growing for 30 years yet, Son.

One more year my friend,

Dankdude said:

You need a full spectrum (overlapping spectrum) in order to get full genetic expression from a plant, these genetic expressions are activated by hormonal changes with in the plant. How are these hormonal changes activated with in the plant? But different parts of the light sprctrum.
UV is needed more in Vegitative growth than it is in flowering.

Spring and summer time are times of the year that produce more UV light than anyother time in the year. Plants put on more Vegitative growth during these months. Where as in in fall and winter months less UV light is produced.
When does most of the flowering (seed production and release) happen in Marijuana? During the late summer and yearly fall when the vegitative hormones are no longer needed.

Click to expand...

Plants DO NOT use the UV part of the light spectrum. Don't get confused because Metal Halides or HPS lights put out some UV light, that plants use this UV light - they do not. In fact Halides and HPS lights put out lots of the light spectrum that plants do not use which makes their use particularly uneconomic because a lot of the light is wasted.

Plants only need/use two parts of the light spectrum - blue 350-500 NW's for vegetative growth and 600-700 NW's for the flowering - neither of these two spectrums contain any UV light whatsoever and the two flavours of Envirolites (compact flourescents) in popular use for growing plants indoors mimic those two colour spectrums in the two bulbs they produce - and neither put out any UV light.

The 'spindly' nature of the plants you describe is entirely due to lack of the correct type of light and lack of quantity of the correct type of light - nothing whatsoever to do with a lack of UV.

And I don't care how old you are or how long you've been growing - plants DO NOT USE UV LIGHT.

Bold first post BabyGro.

Good points all around guys. Got me curious now.

I have allways thought that UV rays inticed the plant to produce more resin in order to protect itself.

-=4:20=-Guy said:

I have allways thought that UV rays inticed the plant to produce more resin in order to protect itself.

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So hows that supposed to work? If the plants can't even see the UV light spectrum, how are they supposed to use it to produce more resin?

The same reason that your skin tans and burns in the sun. If you tan frequently your skin will get tough and leathery to help stop the UV rays.

You cant see UV rays but they are there and can affect you.

Sounded logical when I heard it but like I said Im intrigued.

I asked Ed Rosenthal about UV recently. He gave me one of his typical concise answers, but it surprised me. I told him I thought HPS didn't have any UV, so I was running a UV reptile tube with them, and he said that was good, because it "would increase potency." ( _!!_)

I haven't had a chance yet to ask him for more detail.

I still haven't been back to EYE to see if Hortilux has UV.

IVE GOT PROF that you need a WHITE, blue and red leds to grow. if you look at the two charts below you can see what wavelength each colour of led will produce and the other shows what chemicals are produced at each wavelength. I ALSO BELIEVE THIS PROFS IT WORkS.


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