LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

Originally Posted by hyroot

The buds are just as dense. They look amazing. More color and very frosty and very sticky.

4 of them only got 2 week veg time and the rest had 5 weeks. The 2 week ones replaced others that were doing horrible thanks to the WACK Dr. Earth Soil. Never use that again. Also I did not cut off any lower growth this round either. I wanted to see if these bulbs could penetrate to the lower buds. If they were spread out more they probably would have swelled more. I have sveral more to chop his weekend and those have been the most healthy so .......

I'm going back to my former techniques. so we will see in 6 weeks or so if they do better than this round.

my problem is I keep experimenting with different things every batch.......

I'm thinking of rocking just 5 uvl redsun , 2 coral wave, and 1 uvl super actinic for flower. For now im just going to swap out 2 bulbs for now.

I have some going at the same time now with 1000w and t5 and the ones under the t5 have slightly bigger buds too. They are all at 3 weeks. these ones got the proper veg time and were very healthy all through veg, went back to ffof soil.

I use UVL AQUA Suns in veg; UVL Red Sun/Life in flower

What do you guys think about using T5's for a commercial grower? Practical with all the bulb switching? Im talking a 2 room with 24 plants in flower type operation that is currently running 8 1000's in each room.

Originally Posted by Lucius Vorenus

What do you guys think about using T5's for a commercial grower? Practical with all the bulb switching? Im talking a 2 room with 24 plants in flower type operation that is currently running 8 1000's in each room.

I believe that it is possible to come up with a viable commercial PAR T5 solution that would involve minimal bulb switching...

As far as yields... It looks like the proof is not yet in the pudding. I do want to say that I wish I was able participate in the amazing research being performed here, but my current situation is LED panels supplemented with CFL. Works great for me, so I have no need to replace it. But I would love to build a PAR T5 in a similar space and run comparisons, but... ***sigh*** I am not able to at the moment for several reasons. Anyways, MANY THANKS to those of you who are pushing the research!!! Keep the pictures coming!!! =D =D =D

Originally Posted by Psytranceorgy

I believe that it is possible to come up with a viable commercial PAR T5 solution that would involve minimal bulb switching...

I'd love to hear one!

Originally Posted by Lucius Vorenus

I'd love to hear one!

Seriously? Suggestions for bulb configurations are found all throughout this thread...

I could come up with a configuration to suggest to you, but my suggestions are purely theoretical. In fact I have previously posted some suggestions earlier on in this thread for an 8 bulb setup, which once you had a good 8 bulb setup, you could basically just repeat/scale out as big as you want from there, but yeah, I am not actually growing with a PAR T5 setup.

I would listen to someone like UnderCurrentDWC who is actually growing with PAR T5 in a "larger" space, and having what looks to me like great success! AlterNation, PetFlora, murshdawg, organicbynature, of course the pr0f himself, and increasingly many others here are also actually growing with PAR T5 setups and dicussing their results... It's a work in progress!

So I say to you, do the research, take the plunge and build your own PAR T5 setup, and let us know the results! Many of the bulb choices involved here come down to personal decisions, and the results are not yet documented, so JOIN IN THE FUN =D

I have my two tents up and going and went dark for 12hrs last night. 6 plants in each tent, one tent is a 600w air cooled reflector hood with a digital ballast and Hortilux bulb. The other is a 8 bulb Bad Boy with 3 Red Suns, 2 Fijis, 2 454s and 1 75.25. I have two Coral Waves that will be here Monday that I will put in place of the 454s. Aquarium Specialies screwed me and did not ship them 3 day when they said they would....All 12 came out from being Vegged under a 600w MH and are 18-24" tall and a little lankey. They spent one day in Veg with my set up and already the T5 plants perked up better. One even grew itself into one of the bulbs over night! I had at least a 4" gap from the closest plant too. It was split between the 454 bulb and Red Sun if it matters. Anyway, I will try to keep you all posted!

Originally Posted by Redoctober

Thanks organic! I definitely didn't memorize all 149 pages, but it appears you did Rainman

I like the Flora Sun graph, especially the far red 760 peak for flowering, but there does appear to be a decent amount of wasted peaks there. That's a very strong 545 peak as well as a 610 which probably accounts for 30-40% of the bulb's output. I know we do need some green in there but this may be overkill. Thanks for obtaining all those graphs from Zoo Med!

okthanks, I'm very interested in that Gro-Lux bulb. I assume you are in the US? How was the shipping charge on those boys? The Gro-Lux and the AquaMedic Plant Grow could be the new base bulbs. It is indeed hard to find red T5's and unfortunately most of the aquarium applications are based on the visual appeal of how they make the tank and the fish look rather than attacking it from a plant growing mindset. Most fish tank people are growing coral, and perhaps coral needs less red wavelengths than land based plants. After all, blue light is absorbed least by ocean water, so this is what coral receive the most of, and have probably evolved to make more efficient use of blue light and have less of a need for the red wavelengths. Thus aquarium bulbs would be geared more toward the actinic side of the spectrum. Just a theory.

I think you got this, but I was of course joking about memorizing the thread and serious about an FAQ/Index. This thread has been such a learning process, it's probably a pretty big thing for new folks to tackle at this point, with information spread all throughout. Maybe we can put something together as a group and the Prof can link to it in the initial post.

I agree the Flora Sun is not perfect, I just haven't come across anything that has a better graph to my eyes. The 550 spike is tall but narrow, so as I understand it there isn't a lot of actual wattage going into it (am I wrong about this?). There is also a spike at ~610-615 as you note. This is actually where the peak is on the Red Sun graph, though it sounds like the Red Suns are really at 630 and their chart is just not very good. Also, HPS are heavily focused in this yellow/orange area and while it's not the most efficient part of the spectrum, it's far from wasted.

It's worth pointing out that nobody besides for me, I think, has really latched onto this bulb - so it's not very popular right now. I'm not thrilled with the bulb color, but don't have a lot to compare it to. I don't see any graphs I like better for a base bulb though. It's a broader spectrum bulb to be sure, but one that fits the shape of the PAR curve quite well. But is it as good as it looks in the chart even? Beats me.

hyroot - sorry to hear your yield was lower than expected! Keep us updated!

Originally Posted by hyroot

Ok I take back what I said obout the fiji's. I just took half of what I chopped down and put into jars. I got much less than I expected. I was expecting an hp and got 5 oz. Granted they had a few deficiency's when they went into flower and bug issues this round and some of them were smaller than before. The quality is unreal. I started looking at th bulbs and the fiji purps do look more blue than the coral waves. So it seems there is more blue than red. So I am thinking of swapping out 2 fiji purps with redsuns then possibly throw the fiji purps into veg. I know thats the opposite of what I said. But after seeing my yield, the drunk goggles came off. on the other hand there were many other factors that I never had to deal with before. So I cant really judge this batch. This might just be some bitter ramblings though.

Hmm... a little confused... are you saying that you WERE pro fiji purp, but now you're not so sure? Or the other way around?