Overthinker
Member
Right guys and girls I'm running a 400 watt hps with an enforcer reflector, I was thinking of adding some led lights as side lighting. Any one got any experience with this and is it worth adding them.
If you have room in your temps/VPD, then it may be. But I another option to consider is stepping up to a 600w digi HPS, which are the most efficient at turning watts to lumens/PAR, even more efficient than 1k's and way more efficient than 400's, especially if your 400 is a core and coil ballast.
Yes, supplementing your hps with led's can only help, even cheap chinese led's will help.
Nope, they won't.
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/content/filerepository/CMP/00/001/068/Rate of photosynthesis limiting factors.pdf
High light intensity will damage Chlorophyll molecules, which there are only so many of, to begin with. IF you haven't reached your plants limit in terms of photosynthetic rate, yes, any LED will help, but if you have, no extra light will help. Sorry. You're telling me 1 plant under a 1200 watt HID will grow even bigger if I add 60 watts of LED? Get real!
Nope, they won't.
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/content/filerepository/CMP/00/001/068/Rate of photosynthesis limiting factors.pdf
High light intensity will damage Chlorophyll molecules, which there are only so many of, to begin with. IF you haven't reached your plants limit in terms of photosynthetic rate, yes, any LED will help, but if you have, no extra light will help. Sorry. You're telling me 1 plant under a 1200 watt HID will grow even bigger if I add 60 watts of LED? Get real!
Learn the read the question, the op is using 400W hps, adding additional led's will help, even cheap chinese ones. I know, I have a 400W hps that I added 2 chinese UFO's to and it helped.
I read the question, the "1200w" example I gave was just that, an example, and obviously an extreme one.
Just because you have grown with a 400 watt HPS doesn't mean anything. Like I said in my first post, it depends on many factors including both lumen output and the number of plants, as well as their size. Different ballasts/bulbs don't all emit uniform levels of light. Larger plants have larger biomass and can, therefore, support greater levels of photosynthesis, more nutrients, etc. Logically. The link I provided explains the reasons behind this in greater detail. The OP didn't provide any information besides the wattage and brand of his light. 1 plant? 2 Plants? 8 plants? Vertical? SCROG? The answer is, at the end of the day, it depends.
My second comment was mostly in response to yours and not the original post. Maybe I misinterpreted you, but when you said adding LED can "only help" I assumed you meant it will always help regardless of scenario. Correct me if I'm wrong.