My new plants are HATING my new t8 leds!!!!

Rocket Soul

Well-Known Member
There's nothing missing but you get more usable light and wider spectrum growing with LED's and you need to adjust accordingly.
Wider spectrum with led is not entirely true. In your standard growlight there is very little outside the standard range of blurples: 450nm - 660nm. Yes, there are some light that throw in a a smidgen of far red but usually its so low in coverage between 660 and 700 that you cant really count it in comparison with the coverage between above mentioned peak. EVO sammies goes a bit further but in most cases 90nm of 300 total in the range of 400-700 is almost completely uncovered. If using extended par range this grows even further. Some of the best parts of the spectrum is right there at those ends and i feel its a misstake to just skimp out there; theres almost a 3rd of the visible spectrum and even more of the bio reactive spectrum left out...
 

waytoofaded

Well-Known Member
The MarsHydro greenhouse light is meant to used in a greenhouse and not as a stand-alone light in a tent. It's supplemental lighting for the sun, you just need the most efficient spectrum to blast on cloudy days to supplement a light that already has everything else in abundance.

I don't know that the spectrum of a T8 looks like - can you post a picture of the spectrum.

The spectrum of a 6500k light is shown here:

View attachment 5432562

Is blue heavy which is used for plants in the vegetative stage. Blue photons inhibit cell expansion so plants grown under a lot of blue light will tend to be short and compact. That's desirable in many situations but there's a "blue photon penalty" when it comes to yield. Typically, growers will use lights with a blue heavy spectrum in veg and then switch to a light that has a high percentage of red in the spectrum in flower.

Red photons do not inhibit cell expansion, the promote cell expansion and they're significantly more electrically efficient than diode that generate blue photons. That's where legacy growers used HPS lamps which have a high percentage of red.

The reason to ask for the spectrum of your light is that, per Bugbeee, grow lights should have at least 4% blue in their spectrum so as to avoid malformed plants. That number looks an awful lot like the percentage of blue that the Mars has in one of their new "greenhouse" lights.


View attachment 5432567


It would be surprising is the T8's don't have some blue in them. The 4% number can't be a trade secret so I'd have to ask - what else changed when you went from the T8 to the 6500k light?

Re. HPS to LED - the spectra are different, one difference being that LED's don't heat the plant and the grow space the way HPS does. I've seen research done that compares HPS to LED and there's no mention of any difference in nutrients so I suspect that it was an environmental issue (different temperature = different VPD = different transpiration rates = different nutrient uptake) that causes nutrient issues.
 
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