LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

Whatstrain said:
Sorry for the stupid question but i just got quoted $105 for 16 3' T5's. Does that sound right? and also would i be able to use coral lighting with them? Just seems like maybe they mishit a number or something as i would imagine the bulbs alone for a normal t5 is more than $105.
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That's a steal.
If you can get 16x(Sixteen) 36" T5 units, for $105,
then do it.
 
The 5w, 660nm LED's are about $4 a piece. I figure I would need at least 250w of 660nm, so that would put it at $200 just for the LEDs. That's a lot to spend to try an experiment!
I am going to stick with the Kessil for now to see if it even does anything! If it seems to make some improvements to the buds, then I will look into experimenting more. I really think that LEDs are the way to go for getting the 660nm in there. Unless, of course, if we all pooled together to get WavePoint to make us a 660nm only bulb? If there minimum order is 1000, if we all pitched in $100 or something then maybe? Is it even possible to make a 660nm only bulb with floro technology? Like a Red Sun, but 660nm instead of the 630nm. I kinda got the impression that 630nm is just not the right spectrum the plants are looking for. Supposedly that's why the UFO LEDs stopped making the 630nm ones and went to the 660nm ones. It sounds like the 660nm is pretty damn important. I know plants utilize 630nm, I know plants use pretty much every wavelength actually, just in varying amounts. But 660nm sounds like a key wavelength for getting big results. Same reason HPS grows big buds, they push the red side of the spectrum with full intensity. If only it was the RIGHT wavelength! I wish I knew more about how to build LED lights, I would totally do it. I would never waste the money on blue LEDs though, no friggin way! The Giesemann Actinic Plus and Midday is my source of blue!
 
BlueB said:
The 5w, 660nm LED's are about $4 a piece. I figure I would need at least 250w of 660nm, so that would put it at $200 just for the LEDs. That's a lot to spend to try an experiment!
I am going to stick with the Kessil for now to see if it even does anything! If it seems to make some improvements to the buds, then I will look into experimenting more. I really think that LEDs are the way to go for getting the 660nm in there. Unless, of course, if we all pooled together to get WavePoint to make us a 660nm only bulb? If there minimum order is 1000, if we all pitched in $100 or something then maybe? Is it even possible to make a 660nm only bulb with floro technology? Like a Red Sun, but 660nm instead of the 630nm. I kinda got the impression that 630nm is just not the right spectrum the plants are looking for. Supposedly that's why the UFO LEDs stopped making the 630nm ones and went to the 660nm ones. It sounds like the 660nm is pretty damn important. I know plants utilize 630nm, I know plants use pretty much every wavelength actually, just in varying amounts. But 660nm sounds like a key wavelength for getting big results. Same reason HPS grows big buds, they push the red side of the spectrum with full intensity. If only it was the RIGHT wavelength! I wish I knew more about how to build LED lights, I would totally do it. I would never waste the money on blue LEDs though, no friggin way! The Giesemann Actinic Plus and Midday is my source of blue!
Click to expand...

Hateto burst your bubble, but HPS bulbs are almost all Yellow, useless light.
With very little red, and a little blue.
The only spike in the red is yellow.
 
C.Indica said:
Hateto burst your bubble, but HPS bulbs are almost all Yellow, useless light.
With very little red, and a little blue.
The only spike in the red is yellow.
Click to expand...
Re-read my post, I said HPS pushes the red side, if only it was the RIGHT wavelength (660nm) etc. Yellow is on the red side. That's why plants can utilize.
 
OK side by side 600 watt HPS. and 4 foot 8 bulb t5. The T5 plants at week 3 to 4 of flower look fuller and fatter.
The HPS look bigger and the flowers are spread out more. The HPS is going to make a lot more bud in the long run, but it should.
I see the difference in the two, but when it is all dune I will see witch is best smoke.

It is and old movie ,, The day of the Treffids. Look it up on amazon ?
 
Blueb , how are you going to mount or hang the kessils or ufo's? I thought about doing that. I don't see how there would be room for it other than side lighting. I have the t5 a few inches away from the canopy. So mo light will fit and of it did fit, it would block the light from the t5.
 
hyroot said:
Blueb , how are you going to mount or hang the kessils or ufo's? I thought about doing that. I don't see how there would be room for it other than side lighting. I have the t5 a few inches away from the canopy. So mo light will fit and of it did fit, it would block the light from the t5.
Click to expand...
The Kessil fixture is like 2" by 3". It's the size of a flashlight as far as I know. My T5 fixture is about 10" off my canopy as you recommended. :) I'm going to shine the Kessils from the side on a downward angle(maybe with a coat-hanger or some kind of wire with loops, or velcro). I'm only growing one plant so it should be fine. I'm not, and never will go for a UFO because I have read many reviews that say they have bad power driver units and once they go bad, you can't replace or something? I did some research on making my own 660nm 150w light with 5w single chip LEDs. The LEDs are about $8.50 a piece, and the driver is over $100. I think I will stick to the Kessils for now. LOL at least they have a warranty if the driver goes out.

Going back to the HPS subject from earlier,
Although HPS lights emit a yellow dominant wavelength, it is still classified as red light.
I did a RGB analysis of my HPS+HortiBlue room. Here are the results,
hps-hortiluxblue.jpg
It seems like the HPS + Hortilux Blue combo would be a good Veg combo, but not a good Flower combo because the red/blue ratio is wrong. I think I will try the HPS + UVb idea next time instead of adding the Hortilux Blue.


Next I did a RGB analysis of the HPS light alone. The results are interesting. Pretty much sums up why HPS lights work for flowering. They work because the red to blue ratio is correct, not because they have the wrong wavelength. It shows how the red/blue ratio is almost more important than wavelength.
Proper wavelength + proper ratio = perfect buds
Here are the RGB results for the HPS light by itself without the Hortilux Blue,
View attachment 2055518
As you can see the addition of the Hortilux blue adds quite a bit more blue.
 
BlueB said:
The Kessil fixture is like 2" by 3". It's the size of a flashlight as far as I know. My T5 fixture is about 10" off my canopy as you recommended. :) I'm going to shine the Kessils from the side on a downward angle(maybe with a coat-hanger or some kind of wire with loops, or velcro). I'm only growing one plant so it should be fine. I'm not, and never will go for a UFO because I have read many reviews that say they have bad power driver units and once they go bad, you can't replace or something? I did some research on making my own 660nm 150w light with 5w single chip LEDs. The LEDs are about $8.50 a piece, and the driver is over $100. I think I will stick to the Kessils for now. LOL at least they have a warranty if the driver goes out.

Going back to the HPS subject from earlier,
Although HPS lights emit a yellow dominant wavelength, it is still classified as red light.
I did a RGB analysis of my HPS+HortiBlue room. Here are the results,
View attachment 2055459
It seems like the HPS + Hortilux Blue combo would be a good Veg combo, but not a good Flower combo because the red/blue ratio is wrong. I think I will try the HPS + UVb idea next time instead of adding the Hortilux Blue.


Next I did a RGB analysis of the HPS light alone. The results are interesting. Pretty much sums up why HPS lights work for flowering. They work because the red to blue ratio is correct, not because they have the wrong wavelength. It shows how the red/blue ratio is almost more important than wavelength.
Proper wavelength + proper ratio = perfect buds
Here are the RGB results for the HPS light by itself without the Hortilux Blue,
View attachment 2055518
As you can see the addition of the Hortilux blue adds quite a bit more blue.
Click to expand...


it turns out i may be wrong about the 10 inches. just from what i read prior, it need to be that far away for a proper spectrum blend and the spectrum blend would be more important than intensity. This round of which I'm half way through, I dropped the light to 3 inches away and Im seeing much better results in bud size and they are still just as frosty. Each plant only gets light from a few bulbs , so I don't get the same spectrum blend though. I will see at the end of this batch which way is better.

the last 2 weeks of my last batch I did drop the t5 to 2 to 3 inches away. They swelled up a lot more. The quality may be better with proper blend but we will see.....

both times i have had 8 under the t5
 
I was reading about spectrum blending on that ledgrow.eu website. He said that he's taken the reflectors out for the same reason you just mentioned. He said the reflectors prevent spectrum blending at close distances so he took them out so they could blend more and get his plants closer to the lights. Makes sense. He still puts reflective mylar behind his lights. Doesn't seem like you would even need parabolic reflectors if you are keeping the lights at a close distance.
 
without reflectors you're losing at least 180degrees (50%+) of emitted light. With two bulbs per reflector or close to each other for blending, and they're shining on each other then you're losing light due to re-strike. I'd much prefer putting as much of the usable light downward towards my foliage rather than onto another bulb or up and away from where its needed. I make sure to have a equally blended spectrum using my bulb placement. Dont put two red heavy bulbs next to each other, nor two blues. Spread it evenly across the whole panel, so one side gets the same general glow as the other side.... pics soon to come, but Im going pink1/red/blue/pink2/pink1/red/blue/pink2 ... with RedSun for red, CoralWave for blue and pink1=Florasun pink2=AquaMedic Plant Grow.
I get his point, at very close distances...under 6"-ish a single bulb can dominate the overhead light of a very small plant... just rotate your pots abit to give a slight variation of the general glow theyre getting, but this would really only benefit small seedlings. once they have a few nodes and fan leaves, a fan blowing on them will ruffle the leaves enough to get light from other bulbs. A plant with any real size would be "seeing" light from all directions the bulbs are shining on em, they'll be fine as long as you dont have similar bulbs bunched together giving one side more blue or red than the other.
 
hyroot said:
it turns out i may be wrong about the 10 inches. just from what i read prior, it need to be that far away for a proper spectrum blend and the spectrum blend would be more important than intensity. This round of which I'm half way through, I dropped the light to 3 inches away and Im seeing much better results in bud size and they are still just as frosty. Each plant only gets light from a few bulbs , so I don't get the same spectrum blend though. I will see at the end of this batch which way is better.

the last 2 weeks of my last batch I did drop the t5 to 2 to 3 inches away. They swelled up a lot more. The quality may be better with proper blend but we will see.....

both times i have had 8 under the t5
Click to expand...

The closer the better, it may be harder to stuff all 8 under one panel at only a few inches, understood, you may need to raise it to get light to all the tops. But the closer the better, blend your bulbs evenly, if your bulbs are so close that your plant can only effectively "see" 3 bulbs, if they are a Red blue and Full Spectrum then you're golden, and should apply pretty evenly for both veg and flower (obviously the reds should be more dominate in flower) but the closer the better, they love it!
 
My tent is DIY (wood frame ~ 6" wider than the fixture) my fixture BB 8 bulb. I alternate bulbs in a complimentary fashion as UC suggests. Even though there is not much light extending beyond the 2 X 4 footprint, I do wrap my tent with windshield reflector, and was just thinking to clip the reflector material directly to the BB fixture. Hmmmm

FYI Jeff at UV Lighting says he will replace my 3 Red Sun/Lifes (but when?). The 2 I am using are now light orange (they started out blood orange); a considerable amount of phosphors have leaked out. Not sure how beneficial having them in there is, but thinking it's still better than the Quantum Flower bulbs. Thoughts?

The plant I have been baby sitting for a month today, is almost done. Will post pics in a few days just before putting her into the dark
 
C.Indica said:
Hateto burst your bubble, but HPS bulbs are almost all Yellow, useless light.
With very little red, and a little blue.
The only spike in the red is yellow.
Click to expand...

With all due respect, this is the kind of statement that makes PAR growers look bad. Yellow is not useless light, green is not useless light. Red wavelengths are severely over-rated by ganj growers because they mistakenly think the PAR graph applies to plants exclusively. (it is a combined pigment absorbance graph, meaning that there are pigments on the graph which plants do not possess) HPS's do obviously emit plant usable light, and plenty of it (intensity) no the spectrum is not "good quality light" but to claim that yellow light is unusable to plants is to jeopardize the integrity of your other pretty spot on statements.
Yellow/Green light are obviously highly reflected by leaves (infrared in excess of 740nm as well) this means that they are the most reflected light types in the canopy while still showing 23%+ use in photosynthetic processes. This means that the other 77% that is not diffused or scattered or absorbed by some other pigment, just rockets from one chloroplast to another, deep into the canopy and even along and inside a leaf itself, according to "Green Light Drives CO2 Fixation Deep within Leaves"
(Jindong Sun, John N. Nishio2 and Thomas C. Vogelmann). Ganj growers often refer to this effect as "penetration" if a light possesses enough yellow/green/IR to bounce through all/most parts of the canopy.
Where you fall short with HPSs is with the phenotypic expression of terpenes, a number of cannabinoids, and the severe climate factors you introduce. I think it should be noted, however, that plant's (higher plants at least) seem to experience a higher oversaturation point with yellow/green light meaning you can force-feed them more of this light than other types. So while you are supplementing your hortilux with RED LEDs, blueb, be careful not to overdo the red. Maybe make 2-3 units to spread, since you are opting for such high watt diodes. (yea you can run them at lower wattage but why would you?) Plenty of stories on the net of people bleaching leaves with overly intense red units.
Hope i balanced criticism with helpful info.
C.indica--
Not trying to throw you a dig, I'd expect the same if someone found me trippin up,
MPP


edit:
Lack of penetration is why us t5er's Scrog/Sog/LST/crop/top etc, unless we roll like phaeton(sp?) and just surround the bitches
 
PetFlora said:
My tent is DIY (wood frame ~ 6" wider than the fixture) my fixture BB 8 bulb. I alternate bulbs in a complimentary fashion as UC suggests. Even though there is not much light extending beyond the 2 X 4 footprint, I do wrap my tent with windshield reflector, and was just thinking to clip the reflector material directly to the BB fixture. Hmmmm

FYI Jeff at UV Lighting says he will replace my 3 Red Sun/Lifes (but when?). The 2 I am using are now light orange (they started out blood orange); a considerable amount of phosphors have leaked out. Not sure how beneficial having them in there is, but thinking it's still better than the Quantum Flower bulbs. Thoughts?

The plant I have been baby sitting for a month today, is almost done. Will post pics in a few days just before putting her into the dark
Click to expand...
It is my understanding that it is the gas (from whence the plasma is generated) that leaks out, not the phosphor coating, anyone want to weigh in on this?

which gave me this idea:
anyone thought of writing one of the manufacturer's of the bulbs and asking what kind of product might be appropriate to do a touch up glue-spackel job on the end caps, you might be able to prevent the EXTREMELY quick decline in output you guys are describing with a couple tiny dabs of glue around the connection point, even just where you can access.

Hope that pans out,
mpp
 
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