Hi everyone
I bought s cheap 600w led panel for my veg tent.
Looking at it tho I think it's the wrong spectrum of light way to red.
I was going to use a 600w eurolux hps for my flower tent and it says it's good for flowering but that seems two blue/ walm white.
Should I switch them round or rethink what I'm using ???
Thanks
I'd suggest trying several different combinations, and see what works best for you.
I have 4 300 (140) w LED units.
- 100 3w LEDs (generic, w/focusing lenses, first one I bought, too much red, but I think 9-bands)
- 60 5w LEDs (generic, w/focusing lenses, more blue, predominately red)(I had counted them, but the spreadsheet got corrupted and I'm not going to recount)
- Viparspectra V300 which has 50.2% blue light (lots of blue) and 12 bands with focusing lenses and mini reflective cups (also most expensive unit of my list). When I run this light with the 100 3w unit, I get about 30% blue light, same percentage as natural sunlight.
- Hybergrow SMD all diodes are the same color, whitish with a reddish tinge, no focusing lenses, about 180 degrees of light. I haven't used this light before this upcoming bloom, but a friend borrowed it and said his plants did well under it.
What seems to work well is the 60 5w LED as the single light in the vegetative area, and I'm really happy with it for that purpose. It's much like the 100 3w unit, but besides the fewer diodes, I can see there's a little more reflected blue light. With it I grew these healthy plants 24/0 for several months, although the photo illumination is fluorescent:
In the bloom tent I now have three, but last bloom I used a combination of two units which results in 30% blue light. By combining dissimilar units together in the tent, I have more total bands than any of the lights individually have. I think of this as a fuller frequency. Plus I get the benefit of more light during bloom than vegetative. I just put a third one in the tent, will use it this next bloom, the SMD unit without focusing lenses. That will increase the total light, and assuming all three are used at once, decrease the relative percent of blue to about 23%.
So far I'm happy with them. Many years ago I grew one crop under a 1000w MH and bloomed by adding a 400 HPS. It was awesome, and so was the power bill. I still have that light, the ballast is huge, larger than a briefcase, I think it's just a huge transformer, although I've never disassembled it. I used it one time, and decided it was too costly a light to use. Over six hundred bucks to run decades ago before some electricity cost increases. It would probably cost a couple thousand a month to run today. But it grew great weed!
