Need help finding good LED

Just curious if anyone could tell SWIM where to purchase a good LED for veg?

Blackstar. ebay

the one in the bottom left was lst under cfls and is like 16 weeks old in soil... the other 3 are 12/12 from seed in coco under a 240 blackstar one 5 weeks the other two 4 weeks, all in a 2x2 tent witht hem cheap ass ebay 14 watters for side lighting though i think they are useless i paid for them and am making them make light damnit... just something to add to your info.(its the "flowering" 240 bs).View attachment 2006119

Blackstar 240 from ebay is a great deal. Its just not 240 actual watts is all. It has 240w worth of diodes. But even still, $/PAR is better than even the more expensive models, just LST, scrog your plants to creat a flat canopy as the LED has very poor penetration compared to HID or even cfl.

Just looked up the blackstar and it looks pretty good. Thx

I've read alot that you can't use LED lights throughout your whole grow? Is that true? I've seen some pics of some really good grows with LED's. The fact that they don't put off any heat is the biggest draw to me. I just don't know very much about them.

I've been doing a lot of reading about LED grow lights and only one thing can be said for sure - there is no overriding agreement on types and effectiveness.

Some say that the higher wattage diodes (2w to 5W) give stronger light better performance while others claim that anything over 1W diodes result is increased loss of efficiency and recommend 1W per diode. In other words, a 100W led grow light should have approximately 100 separate LED lights.

Then there's colour spectrum. Most LED grow lights will put 60% - 80% of their lights as red, the rest as blue, or a mixture of blue, orange, purple, etc.

I do know that red is best for flowering and blue is best for vegetative growth. The best ratio? There are a number of conflicting claims.

You really have to sort through all the debates and make your decision based on what seems to be the most informed and sensible.

Most LED grow lights are manufactured in China and then repackaged and sold from suppliers in North America and Europe.

Hope that helps.

i use combo LED and CFLs. I find good deals at HTG http://www.htgsupply.com/Category-LED-Grow-Lights.asp here is a pic of one side of my 4x8 tent.

I am just finishing up my first grow with a ProGrow 180. I highly recommend it. And yes you can use an LED for the whole grow. Heat was a huge issue for me, living in the desert and LEDs were the answer. There is a lot of conflicting info on LEDs. I did tons of research on RIU and elsewhere before buying. I have a couple T8 CFLs, too for side lighting because I already had them in the garage.

kentuckyboy said:

I've read alot that you can't use LED lights throughout your whole grow? Is that true? I've seen some pics of some really good grows with LED's. The fact that they don't put off any heat is the biggest draw to me. I just don't know very much about them.

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LED naysayers say this shit a lot. That was probably true 2-3 years ago but now the technology is there. The ONLY thing HID has on LED for any stage of development is over all lumen output per watt and light penetration. I guess when you only factor bulb/reflector/ballast HID wins in $/lux too. But not when you factor energy costs, ventilation requirements and cost of purchase/upkeep, LED becomes more financially interesting. There are ample journals proving the viability of quality led used in flowering... the failures are usually crap panels combined with HID growing methods epic fail... epic

Quitekeen said:

... the failures are usually crap panels combined with HID growing methods epic fail... epic

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Could you elaborate on this? I am switching to a complete LED system and the only change I can think of would be light distance to the plant.

Leds don't have the penetration that a hps has. Need to restrain plants height. Either scrog or lst

what voidling said.

So when you grow with HID lights you can let the plant grow in a more natural way, ie you dont have to train it to get it to produce lots of fat sticky buds. This is because the light is powerful enough to penetrate through the upper canopy of leaves and provide the internal part of the plant with light. With LED and Florescent lighting, it has very little ability to push light through the upper canopy. This is the main argument against LED.

HOWEVER

If you are growing personal, and have the time to train your plants in such a way so that instead of having one main top and several side branches, the plant has a flat canopy (can be woven through a net, or section of wire fence), this makes all of the 'branches' receive the same light as if they were all tops. This is good because the plant thinks it has multiple tops rather than just one. You can set your LED panels like 5-6 inches away and cover your whole canopy with lovely pink and blue light!

So using the HID growing methods with LED panels is destined to fail... epic fail, lol

Ok, that makes sense; but what about these 2 posts from another LED thread, the first showing some pretty long bud grown under LED and the second advising a long veg time?

Psytranceorgy said:

Oh you can get big buds from a 240w blackstar... Buds I've grown under a single 240w blackstar:

These are a couple harvest pics from my first grow ever. A fem Nirvana AK48 from seed, entire cycle under a single Blackstar 240w:

I am on my third grow now, and the results are repeatable. These next two are from my 2nd grow... a fem Reserva Privada Kandy Kush from seed:

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Bad Karma said:

Psytraceorgy, how long are you vegging your plants for before the 12/12 flip?
From my experience, longer veg times make all the difference when growing with LED's.
An LED crop can't be run like an HPS crop, they're different lights, so different techniques are necessary.
That is the mistake most growers make with LED's.

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Interesting. Not sure which light or method he is using.

Also forgot lollipop sog works, just don't grow too tall

you can still grow long colas, you actually grow more when you train them. And psytrance is probably right about vegging longer... as long as you couple that extended vegging with training.

Voidling said:

Also forgot lollipop sog works, just don't grow too tall

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Mine is kind of lollipopd too. I used subcools method of topping, then supercropping, then tying down branches to lower and open canopy. When I use a lux meter i get an even reading on almost every bud site. The next 4 weeks is going to go sooo sllllloooooowww

Voidling said:

Interesting. Not sure which light or method he is using.

Also forgot lollipop sog works, just don't grow too tall

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those pics are from my first/second grows (ever), 2x4x5.5 tent, single plant grows, WATERFARM, no training, first one (Nirvana AK4 got long veg period like 5-6 weeks, 2nd one (RP Kandy Kush) vegged like 4 weeks, Light = Blackstar 240 only on the AK48, and Blackstar 240 + 2 68W 2700K CFLs on the Kandy Kush, each yielded right at 3 zips of really nice bud...

I will be switching over to 2 plant scrog in that tent moving forward...

ah shit! I lied, I actually did use the FIM method once on each of those plants on the central shaft during veg to promote some bushiness... dunno how great that worked out lol... I like the idea of scrog a lot more than I like the idea of FIM/topping...

I looked up the Pro-Grow 180 and found it http://hydroponicshut.com/pro-grow-180-watt-led-grow-light-hydroponics-hut.html . Can anyone tell me if this is a legitimate site to purchase from?