LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

Calrt

Member
Anybody have a good alternative to UVL Red Suns? Just had my 3rd one go bad. I had taken it out for a few weeks, but when I put it back nada. I have an email in to AS, but this is getting ridiculous.

I am drying now, maybe another week. Not sure what to expect due to burning them up from the inside; probably OD them with too much DM Potash +
Thats sucks to hear more people with Red Sun problems. Has anyone run one in a VHO fixture? Could under driving them be a problem?
 

asdmo

Active Member

Undercover Cop

Active Member
Thats sucks to hear more people with Red Sun problems. Has anyone run one in a VHO fixture? Could under driving them be a problem?
I was optimistic when awaiting my 4 Red Suns and I started seeing people talking about their shoddy quality... I thought "no not me"...

2011-12-20 05.21.26-1.jpg2011-12-20 05.21.38-1.jpg2011-12-20 05.25.24.jpg

less than a week in and it stopped lighting on the left half :( the geek at aquarium specialty said "yeah we've been hearing alot about the UVL's" then said they'd replace it.
 

hyroot

Well-Known Member
All my bulbs are going strong especially the redsuns. 4 months strong.


Try switching bulbs to make sure its the bulb and not the fixture the bb's sometimes have qc issues and who knows with the ebay lights. I bought a hydrofarm from ebay myself too. No issues with that though.
 

hyroot

Well-Known Member
To all my fellow PARtians.

In my quest to organically irradicate all the harmful bugs from the garden I stumbled upon the cure for genetic powdery mildew. You can buy it in a bottle ready to go. What is it and where can I get it you ask. I'm building the suspense here. Not only is it an insecticide, its also a fungicide. It can be used as foliar, soil drench or used in a reservoir. It is organic and omri listed. Its a mix of fish oil and sesame oil. You can find it at home depot for $14. it is called, wait for it wait for it.......
 

Undercover Cop

Active Member
All my bulbs are going strong especially the redsuns. 4 months strong.


Try switching bulbs to make sure its the bulb and not the fixture the bb's sometimes have qc issues and who knows with the ebay lights. I bought a hydrofarm from ebay myself too. No issues with that though.
Yeah, already swapped in a blue wave and its running fine in that fixture, then I tried it in a different fixture and it was still bad. Aquarium specialty said its prob a re-occuring prob with the end caps that cause them to fail... makes sense but whatev, now I gotta wait another week for shipping from East coast to the desert.




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UnderCurrentDWC

Active Member
So just clearing things up, say you have VHO bulbs; a non-VHO t5 Fixture is able to put out the same light intensity as a VHO fixture?
no, the ho t5 fixture will fire the bulb @ 54w giving you around 5000 lummens from the bulb, the vho will fire it @ around 96w giving you around 7500 lummens. Firing the bulb with only 54w will give you a longer bulb life.

 

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
RE: Red Life/Sun

My replacement worked fine. Then I took it out to return to veg. When I reinstalled it, it did not fire in my BB. I put another bulb in its' place which works fine. Just heard from Kelly at AS, she said they sure had a lot of problems with that 'batch'.
 

asdmo

Active Member


no, the ho t5 fixture will fire the bulb @ 54w giving you around 5000 lummens from the bulb, the vho will fire it @ around 96w giving you around 7500 lummens. Firing the bulb with only 54w will give you a longer bulb life.

Thank makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up UC! Time for me to order some bulbs!
 

Undercover Cop

Active Member
RE: Red Life/Sun

My replacement worked fine. Then I took it out to return to veg. When I reinstalled it, it did not fire in my BB. I put another bulb in its' place which works fine. Just heard from Kelly at AS, she said they sure had a lot of problems with that 'batch'.
Yeah, I will give Aquarium Specialty credit at least for being responsive about it. I talked to Kelly too, and she was pretty cool about it and said they'd send out a replacement right away, and she said the replacements are coming from a newer order than the stock that was just sold so hopefully the prob as been fixed at the source. (although I just got mine a week ago so who knows) Im always an optimist, and thought all mine would be fine, and now I have to hope my replacement will be fine... but damn, your replacement went out too :( That really sucks.

I wish there were more T5 options in the red spectrum :???:
 

organicbynature

Active Member
I'm going to be ordering some more T5s soon. I've been using them as side lighting, but I think I'll be starting an all T5 grow soon.

In light of all the problems with Red Suns, I may try some of the Philips red bulbs I posted graphs for a little while ago. If so, I'll let y'all know how they compare!

Also, I've been thinking about something that I think could use some clearing up. As PAR/PUR-educated growers, we don't worry too much about lumens. But why?

A 1000w HPS puts out about 150k lumens (I'm looking at an AgroMax bulb at HTG supply for that number), a 600w HPS puts out about 95k lumens. A 400w HPS is rated at 55k. Meanwhile those 8-bulb New Wave T-5 fixtures mentioned recently are rated at 40k lumens. So with two 600w HPS bulbs you get 190k lumens, where as with the same wattage of T5 panels you only get 120k. Given the significant decrease in lumen output, how can we expect the T5s to compare to HPS, even with more PAR?

It has to do with how lumens are measured.

I'm no expert on this, and would love confirmation from someone who is or an awesome link or something like that, but my understanding is that lumens as a measurement are "calibrated" for the human eye. Because the human eye sees green/yellow light more intensely than red/blue, a certain amount of green light will produce (a lot) more lumens than the same amount of red light. As a result, these color lights appear less bright to us, but not to plants, which as we know are much more interested in red/blue light.

Why does this matter to us? Because we look at some of these base bulbs and they look pretty darn white to us. But, maybe they should, right? Even though there may not be as much yellow/green light as red/blue light in these bulbs as many of the graphs show, they should still appear whiter to us than we might expect, because the green and yellow that is in the lights will appear brighter to us than the red/blue light. (I'm talking about base bulbs - Fijis and their alternatives, not actinics, Red Suns, etc.)

In fact, according to this graph, the human eye uses light essentially opposite from photosynthesis in terms of efficiency, so clearly our eye is not a good judge of spectrum/light intensity for this application.

luminous_efficiency.jpg

Source: The Perceptive Efficiency of the Human Eye as a Function of Wavelength

Thoughts? I wish I had a better source for this information.
 

hyroot

Well-Known Member
I'm going to be ordering some more T5s soon. I've been using them as side lighting, but I think I'll be starting an all T5 grow soon.

In light of all the problems with Red Suns, I may try some of the Philips red bulbs I posted graphs for a little while ago. If so, I'll let y'all know how they compare!

Also, I've been thinking about something that I think could use some clearing up. As PAR/PUR-educated growers, we don't worry too much about lumens. But why?

A 1000w HPS puts out about 150k lumens (I'm looking at an AgroMax bulb at HTG supply for that number), a 600w HPS puts out about 95k lumens. A 400w HPS is rated at 55k. Meanwhile those 8-bulb New Wave T-5 fixtures mentioned recently are rated at 40k lumens. So with two 600w HPS bulbs you get 190k lumens, where as with the same wattage of T5 panels you only get 120k. Given the significant decrease in lumen output, how can we expect the T5s to compare to HPS, even with more PAR?

It has to do with how lumens are measured.

I'm no expert on this, and would love confirmation from someone who is or an awesome link or something like that, but my understanding is that lumens as a measurement are "calibrated" for the human eye. Because the human eye sees green/yellow light more intensely than red/blue, a certain amount of green light will produce (a lot) more lumens than the same amount of red light. As a result, these color lights appear less bright to us, but not to plants, which as we know are much more interested in red/blue light.

Why does this matter to us? Because we look at some of these base bulbs and they look pretty darn white to us. But, maybe they should, right? Even though there may not be as much yellow/green light as red/blue light in these bulbs as many of the graphs show, they should still appear whiter to us than we might expect, because the green and yellow that is in the lights will appear brighter to us than the red/blue light. (I'm talking about base bulbs - Fijis and their alternatives, not actinics, Red Suns, etc.)

In fact, according to this graph, the human eye uses light essentially opposite from photosynthesis in terms of efficiency, so clearly our eye is not a good judge of spectrum/light intensity for this application.

View attachment 1948153

Source: The Perceptive Efficiency of the Human Eye as a Function of Wavelength

Thoughts? I wish I had a better source for this information.
Early on in the thread. Prof touches on all that and explains with math and diagrams why lumens (visible light) are irrelavant.
 

hyroot

Well-Known Member
Thes fools just don't know.



[video=youtube;2UFc1pr2yUU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UFc1pr2yUU&hd=1&t=17s[/video]
 
I just typed up a huge post and lost it like an idiot while previewing, so anyway......posting this on this thread as well because it's been helpful and i am using t5. Just ran into some possible issues with some of the leaves 37 days into flower. I've been feeding every 3 days usually with solution mixed to the directions on the bottle of general hydroponics regular line for bloom/ripen. And just the past 2 times with some added koolbloom 1tsp/gallon like it says. Temps have been 82-64(moving in a couple days so i half assed the temp control, but i made adjustments tonight to keep it below 80 at least for 2 more days til it moves to new home to finish. PH has been good, but i noticed today it was 4.5-5.25ish so I flushed with plain water PH'd to 7 to try and raise a little and maybe counteract the burn i'm getting if it's not just due to temps. Anyway problems are some clearly "burned" looking spots on a handful of leaves, curling tips on about 1/3 to 1/4 of plant, more older growth than new. Tiny white specs the size of a pinhead that do not wipe off, small white blotches that look almost bleached, and i think thats it. Here are some of the pictures, i'm also going to start a thread in the problems part of the forum. Thanks for any help and I'm only posting in this thread because i am using t5.bud2.jpgwhitespots1a.jpgwhitespec.jpgfull.jpgburnish3.jpgburnish2.jpgbud4.jpgbud1.jpgbud3.jpgwhitespots2.jpg
 

Attachments

hyroot

Well-Known Member
I just typed up a huge post and lost it like an idiot while previewing, so anyway......posting this on this thread as well because it's been helpful and i am using t5. Just ran into some possible issues with some of the leaves 37 days into flower. I've been feeding every 3 days usually with solution mixed to the directions on the bottle of general hydroponics regular line for bloom/ripen. And just the past 2 times with some added koolbloom 1tsp/gallon like it says. Temps have been 82-64(moving in a couple days so i half assed the temp control, but i made adjustments tonight to keep it below 80 at least for 2 more days til it moves to new home to finish. PH has been good, but i noticed today it was 4.5-5.25ish so I flushed with plain water PH'd to 7 to try and raise a little and maybe counteract the burn i'm getting if it's not just due to temps. Anyway problems are some clearly "burned" looking spots on a handful of leaves, curling tips on about 1/3 to 1/4 of plant, more older growth than new. Tiny white specs the size of a pinhead that do not wipe off, small white blotches that look almost bleached, and i think thats it. Here are some of the pictures, i'm also going to start a thread in the problems part of the forum. Thanks for any help and I'm only posting in this thread because i am using t5.View attachment 1949916View attachment 1949927View attachment 1949925View attachment 1949923View attachment 1949922View attachment 1949920View attachment 1949918View attachment 1949915View attachment 1949917View attachment 1949928
The leaves with red circles around the leaves with the tiny light green spots. That looks like you have spider mites. With high heat thats definitely a possibility. get some pure spray green. That will take care of them after 2 applications, It's omri listed too. just spray the bottom of the leaves like 20 min before they go to sleep. mites like to hang out on the underside of leaves. The leaves with big white blotches, that just looks like nutrient solution got spilled on them and it burned it a little.


light bleaching, when it starts it kind of resembles pm forming but doesn't rub off. instead of turning white it gets more and more yellow
 

pr0fesseur

Well-Known Member
PIcs of finishing products folks, that is what is needed here. Someone prove WEIGHT!
Greeting and salutations all!
Happy holidaze to the rest of you crazy people.

While i would like to see others post their results, I fear what your asking for is not what we actually want.
sure more bud is always good; premium bud is ALWAYS better.
THat being said yes we need pics here, but you must remember were still in the bloom phase for most people by now.
Secondly we must understand while my grows are semi successful, and i did post pics, others are still trying to Dial in results.!
Now then we have had a grower bring in .7 g/w which on a first run with 400W is AMAZING in anyones world let alone T5...
And FINALLY who doesent want AMAZING product?
sure you can buy Moet champagne and they produce a great product cheaply.. but Crystal and Dom is what you WANT! QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.
Brokers in CA are looking for Quality from growers now not just who can grow the biggest plants...
Remember Nevilles HAze? that stuff went for 50$/g and could literally put you in a coma.
 

Lucius Vorenus

Well-Known Member
Greeting and salutations all!
Happy holidaze to the rest of you crazy people.

While i would like to see others post their results, I fear what your asking for is not what we actually want.
sure more bud is always good; premium bud is ALWAYS better.
THat being said yes we need pics here, but you must remember were still in the bloom phase for most people by now.
Secondly we must understand while my grows are semi successful, and i did post pics, others are still trying to Dial in results.!
Now then we have had a grower bring in .7 g/w which on a first run with 400W is AMAZING in anyones world let alone T5...
And FINALLY who doesent want AMAZING product?
sure you can buy Moet champagne and they produce a great product cheaply.. but Crystal and Dom is what you WANT! QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.
Brokers in CA are looking for Quality from growers now not just who can grow the biggest plants...
Remember Nevilles HAze? that stuff went for 50$/g and could literally put you in a coma.
The quality will be there if you are starting with quality genetics. We are talking about yield! We want to know that you can get 5-6z a plant off of a T5 grow.

I agree that most people are in Bloom. We are still in Veg with a 32 bulb T5 grow personally.

Just anxious to know we aren't all wasting our time and money and that YOU don't work for Quantum.
 
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