Mars hydro 2

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Gmack420

Well-Known Member
any one have any real world experience with one? Keeping the power usage and heat down is my main concerns. The extra $ upfront isn't a big issue. Suggestions? Planing out a 4 or 5 light room.
 
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CannaReview

Well-Known Member
Seriously man I'd either go for 600W Gavita Pros or run a 1000W ballast turned down to 750. Only issue with the Gavitas is they have to be 30+ inches from top of the plants.
 
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symptum

Well-Known Member
I've never used one but heard that they are "ok". I am really happy with my California Lightworks Solar storm 440 and 2x solar flare 220 set up. Super dense nugs with more trichomes than I have ever seen on a bud. With LED you need to maintain an even canopy, so lots of topping or fimming, get rid of the popcorn near the bottom by lollipopping and keep the room warmer than you would with HPS as LED don't emit any IR so the plants need to be in 80-85 degree F room for maximum growth potential. And use less nuts per gallon than you would with HPS. Or go organic and let the microbes do the work to balance what your plants uptake.
 
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Gmack420

Well-Known Member
redi jedi said:
See the ads for TastyLED? They are made by a RIU member. If I was considering LED's, thats the way I would go.
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Well after doing some light research if I were to go led it would have to be American made no chineses shit with customer service only in the middle of the fucking night. That seems to be the marshydros biggest complaints. It's only going to be a small room and height is 7.5' so the led advantages intrigue me. Keeping the room at the proper temp would be much easier and the plants can get closer to the lights without burning them. ADV LED seem to have much better customer reviews. I can't find much on tastyLED other then his post on other sites. I'd like subjective reviews not just the word of the seller/builder.
 
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gb123

Well-Known Member
they do get hot...and they don't have the foot print quite yet either.
if the price would come down a bit...Id make a few and try them myself.
 
redi jedi

redi jedi

Well-Known Member
Gmack420 said:
Well after doing some light research if I were to go led it would have to be American made no chineses shit with customer service only in the middle of the fucking night. That seems to be the marshydros biggest complaints. It's only going to be a small room and height is 7.5' so the led advantages intrigue me. Keeping the room at the proper temp would be much easier and the plants can get closer to the lights without burning them. ADV LED seem to have much better customer reviews. I can't find much on tastyLED other then his post on other sites. I'd like subjective reviews not just the word of the seller/builder.
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Hes got a thread here...going commercial...or something like that. He goes by Rahz I think.
 
torontoke

torontoke

Well-Known Member
Build a diy cob rig.
Using Cree cxb3070's
It will cost roughly $500 per rig but they would use half the electricity and put out half the heat.
In a few weeks I will be building one and I will post a thread showing mine.
Have u considered looking into shortened flowering cycles?
 
bigmanc

bigmanc

Well-Known Member
Gmack don't bother. I was going to buy 16x 1200w after speaking to Sara and going through the couple thousand pages on 420mag I decided not too. Some of my reasons include, giving others better pricing while I was buying double the lights or more, hard as fuck to get to Canada without being raped by her conversion and shipping (and actually suggested I drive to the states lol) warranty is different everywhere you look and when questioned it's always the lowest warranty offered. Major negative and soul negative is the warranty. If something breaks they ship you the part to do the electrical and sodering of the electronics or you can send it to some guy that's on the 420 forums and he will do the warranty work when he has time. Complete bullshit, don't bother, get some 1000w that deal down to 600/400. I'm a big fan of NO FANS!!!! in my ballast, single point of failure. I think what everyone needs to worry about is RFI, can land your ass behind bars.
 
redi jedi

redi jedi

Well-Known Member
RFI was a concern when digital ballasts first came out. Only the cheapest Chinese POS are not RF shielded these days
 
bigmanc

bigmanc

Well-Known Member
redi jedi said:
RFI was a concern when digital ballasts first came out. Only the cheapest Chinese POS are not RF shielded these days
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What about lamp cords? There are ballasts that put off RF, any digital ballast running high frequency will put off some RF
 
GroErr

GroErr

Well-Known Member
torontoke said:
Build a diy cob rig.
Using Cree cxb3070's
It will cost roughly $500 per rig but they would use half the electricity and put out half the heat.
In a few weeks I will be building one and I will post a thread showing mine.
Have u considered looking into shortened flowering cycles?
Click to expand...
Agreed, and you don't even have to DIY any more. There's a member here that's building and selling these COB panels at around $2.60/watt US which for Canadians is not a bad price, it'll cost you $2.00+ per watt to build them yourself with decent components. Pacific Light Concepts (Greengenes is one of the owners). These COB LED's are the most efficient per watt, only other lights which are pretty close in efficiency and produce wicked bud and the Sun Systems 315w CMH, a little more heat (between LED and HPS), but you need about 34" above the canopy though, these are what I currently flower with.

Although I didn't buy the MARS, I have a bunch of the reflector panels sold by the same outfit(s) which are pretty well the same thing, for flowering they suck. I use them for clones/seedlings/veg and they work great but for flowering there are much better options like the one's mentioned above, or traditional hps if you don't mind wasting a bunch of heat/light. COB and CMH efficiencies seem like high cost, but it's the old pay me now, or pay me later. Pay more up front and less to hydro, over the life of the units and taking maintenance like replacing hps bulbs all the time, both of these options are cheaper imo.
 
redi jedi

redi jedi

Well-Known Member
A simple way to see if your ballast and cords is putting out RF is the AM radio test...tune a station (in AM band) and approach the operating ballast with the radio. If the ballast is producing RF you will hear static coming through the radio
 
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redi jedi

redi jedi

Well-Known Member
If you have wi-fi internet...that will tell you too...when it goes down every time the lights go on.
 
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