LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

Have you looked at these

http://www.aqua-medic.com/t5_bulbs.shtml

http://coralifeproducts.com/product/lamps/


Aside from all those. The fijis im using are working great. If you read my other posts. Buds are the same size as my 1k but much more frosty and sticky. Im at 6 weeks and this ia my 2nd flower with the t5. In the first batch, per watt and sq ft I matched my 1k with a eye hortilux. 3 fiji, 3 reduns, 2 coral waves. Soon I plan on swapping 1 redsun for a fiji so to have 4 fiji.

Arabic I think you have put together an excellent compliment.

I already own 3 almost new RSuns (one bad), so I'll use them in combination, but sparingly. Currently RSs are 2/8, but once I get either the AquaFloro & Plant Grow I plan on removing one.

Still not convinced what the non Red Suns lack in spike, they make up for band width, as those bands are not very intense.

Arabic said:

When I meant junk I was not only referring to the technical problems, they aren't emitting the correct wavelength, they produce no usable light for chlorophyll A's red spectrum. chlorophyll B is barely made at 633nm, but the Red suns spectrum drops SO fast after 633nm and plants start using more red at 642nm-662nm. I guess if you are in favor of a broader spectrum I'd say go for them. But to me they seem ineffective, I'll add 1 to my 8 bulb flower setup whenever I make it though.

And for the intensity of the AquaMedic Plant Grow, it's got one green spike of bad light. the broadest band is red and it offers the most red at the 640-660 range, plus the blue spike is at ~435nm so i'd say that's PAR. that's good.


this thread should now be about the best 8-bulb flower setup until we find better bulbs

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When I responded to you saying that, my argument was that HPS have very little usable spectrum but still grow great. So to say that Red Suns are 100% useless I think is wrong. Now I will agree that they are not 100% perfect. A broad range from 640nm to 680 would be sweet, but its not....

Gastanker said:

That is super confusing. So a single bulb t5 is one ballast, a 2 bulb is two ballasts linked together - each ballast still fires separately and each goes through a softstart if its ballast is a softstart ballast, if one ballast fails it has no impact at all on the other ballast - why is this 2 bulb fixture worse than the 1 bulb fixture? Are you saying that 8 bulb badboys are bad? They have a bunch of ballasts in parallel. How would linking in parallel create dirty energy?

8 single bulb t5 fixtures plugged into the same power strip is equivalent to 8 single bulb t5 fixtures linked to each other in parallel...

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Computing Dictionary
[h=3]dirty power definition[/h]
Electrical mains voltage that is unfriendly to the delicate innards of computers. Spikes, drop-outs, average voltage significantly higher or lower than nominal, or just plain noise can all causeproblems of varying subtlety and severity (these are collectivelyknown as power hits).

Not "create" dirty energy, your power company "produces" dirty power... so attaching a "fixture" to another "fixture" is not a good idea....
Anyone who works with HID lighting knows what a hotstart will do to both the bulbs and ballasts. im not talking about working with parallel ballasts.. but the incoming power TO the ballast..Every time your fridge comes on your lights in the home mMAY dim thats a SURGE... jsut protect your equipment is all im sayin.. just a cautionary tale... ounce of prevention...

fyi guys, my grow is nothing to gauge these lights by as I obviously ran into some problems with nutrient levels, possibly cal/mag issues, etc... probably didn't help that I kept watering late, and I'm fairly sure I could have gone longer with maturity on some of them. This was my first time so I'm not too disappointed with the 182g I pulled off these crowded 7 plants under one 430watt fixture... but it's certainly not a much as I was hoping for. I blame my method and not the lights.

However, I will say that I did have similar results to some previously posted in the sense that I got some REALLY nice quality buds but just not the volume I'd hoped for. Mine are also a bit airier and leafier than I'd have preferred. It was kind of a bitch to trim because of the leaf content within the bud. I think this was due to my poor growing technique and the loss of a lot of fan leaves earlier on stimulating a lot of late leaf growth... but maybe it is a genetics thing and I just need to buy quality seed to avoid inter-bud leaf development..??

The buds are really potent and they smell/taste great after a slow dry over about two weeks. They've been curing only a few days and they're already really lovely scents, so I can't wait to see how they pan out later on.

I left the small undeveloped branches of each plant in tact and they are back under the lights... not expecting more than another zip total off all of them, but maybe I'll be surprised by some late development that I didn't get to see in the others due to my rush to harvest before the holiday. (I had about 40-50% amber trichomes on most of them, but they were still sort of slim and didn't seem like they were 'swelling' as much as I hoped to see)

I'm very happy with the quality, not so happy about leaf quantity or bud size. Intend to do better next time with the same lights, so keep an ear out on that... and I'll put some dried nug shots up when I get to takin' more pictures...

Arabic said:

My future 8-bulb setup would be No longer using the red sun, I don't care how RED the unusable light is. It has no other blue Par, not wasting a T5 Aquafloro x1 - good spectrum and best 640nm bulb imo, a lot of color from this bulb is PAR and very little is wasted in green Plant Grow x4 - best all around flower bulb, thick red spectrum, lots around the 660nm area and the biggest spike is blue and happens to be PAR as well Flora Sun x1 - I think this is identical to plant grow.. every picture of this shows it being identical, only the picture posted on here showed a spike at 700nm+ so I'd have to pick this for being unique. ATI Super Blue x1 - amazing bulb imo... vegging wonder, beg to differ? ) Coral Wave x1 - only one with 420nm-435nm peak, plus people say it made their plants flower in 2 days because of the high IR output. Crazy. hmm maybe I'd change out a plant grow for another aquafloro to better accomodate 640nm I think this is the best combo until I can prove Flora Sun and Plant Grow are the same bulb.. Spectral graph of Plant Grow: http://www.aqua-medic.de/index.php?r=catalog/product&id=216 Posted graph of Flora Sun: View attachment 1963755 See all that 750nm activity? Can't find it anywhere else on the net. On another note, why hasn't anyone mentioned Aquafloras yet? View attachment 1963760 The 640nm spectrum is targeted decently. I don't know if the axis on the left is ever relevant. If it is then I've overlooked a LOT of information but it seems diff companies use diff numbers.

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If Chlorophyll A is Performing 75% of the photosynthetic action, I'd want to focus more on it's absorption peaks and be less concerned with chlorophyll B. So we're talking about the 662nm spike, the 410nm and 430nm blue peaks. Chlorophyll B's peaks are 642nm and 453nm. That is not to marginalize chlorophyll B, or say it is unimportant, but if I had to chose a bulb concentrated on either 642 like the AquaFlora vs a bulb focused on the 662nm peak like the Plant Grow or Flora Sun, I'd go with the 662nm bulbs. Ideally you'd want a mix of both so maybe throw in 1 642nm AquaFlora just to nail that absorption peak and have a balanced spectrum.

The real question is, for flower, if we eliminate the Red Sun (which I'm all in favor of), how are we going to balance our spectrum to be 60/40 red/blue? All of the bulbs you mentioned Arabic are great bulbs, and probably all we have to choose from, but the dilema is that the Coral Wave and Super Blue are blue bulbs (except for that far red bump in the coral wave), and the others are dual spectrum, but probably slightly "blue heavy" it would seem from the spectral graphs. So with all this blue weighting, how do we tilt the scales towards the red end without a red heavy bulb like a Red Sun?

For those of us that bought the smoking deal through Amazon.....I did a customer service chat with them and this was the response, I might get my light after all! "There is no need to contact the seller again and again, we will file a claim against the seller on 1st, for re-deliver the correct item quantity."

I think this is the best combo until I can prove Flora Sun and Plant Grow are the same bulb..

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I agree, I think the Plant Grow and Flora Sun are very very similar but I'm not sure they're identical, although I initially thought so as well. If you overlay the graphs, the differences I've noticed are:

on the Flora Sun, the 660nm spike on the PG has a slightly higher relative intensity (~.62) than the FS (~.45);
the green spike on the PG (~.59) is less intense than on the FS (~.69), and you'll also notice that the red spike on the PG is higher than its green spike, whereas on the FS, the green spike is higher than the red;
the 600nm peak is a bit higher on the FS than the on the PG;
the blue spikes on both are pretty much the same;
the FS has a (~.2) UVA spike at 360nm and a small UVB spike @ 390nm neither of which seem to be on the PG graph.

I believe the Aqua Medic Plant Grow is also referred to as the "Planta" on many pages, but they are the same bulb. I found this confusing for a while.

So these differences may be subtle, but there are differences. Overall, I'd have to give the edge to the Plant Grow over the Flora Sun. However the Flora Suns are really easy to obtain because they sell them in Petco, so there is no ordering or shipping, or return shipping to deal with should they go bad (I've had one Flora Sun fail on me and I just brought it right back and swapped it for a new one...so easy).

Redoctober said:

I agree, I think the Plant Grow and Flora Sun are very very similar but I'm not sure they're identical, although I initially thought so as well. If you overlay the graphs, the differences I've noticed are:

on the Flora Sun, the 660nm spike on the PG has a slightly higher relative intensity (~.62) than the FS (~.45);
the green spike on the PG (~.59) is less intense than on the FS (~.69), and you'll also notice that the red spike on the PG is higher than its green spike, whereas on the FS, the green spike is higher than the red;
the 600nm peak is a bit higher on the FS than the on the PG;
the blue spikes on both are pretty much the same;
the FS has a (~.2) UVA spike at 360nm and a small UVB spike @ 390nm neither of which seem to be on the PG graph.

I believe the Aqua Medic Plant Grow is also referred to as the "Planta" on many pages, but they are the same bulb. I found this confusing for a while.

So these differences may be subtle, but there are differences. Overall, I'd have to give the edge to the Plant Grow over the Flora Sun. However the Flora Suns are really easy to obtain because they sell them in Petco, so there is no ordering or shipping, or return shipping to deal with should they go bad (I've had one Flora Sun fail on me and I just brought it right back and swapped it for a new one...so easy).

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Well the link arabic put up for the plant grow and the link I put up for the planta. The spectrum for each of those are different. Ill post them up when I get on my computer.

hyroot said:

Well the link arabic put up for the plant grow and the link I put up for the planta. The spectrum for each of those are different. Ill post them up when I get on my computer.

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Someone said earlier that the Planta was discontinued and was replaced w the Plant Grow... so they're prob a little different

this whole time when everyone was referring to the aqua flora. i kept thinking of the sylvania one and i just realized its the geisemann one. i like that one more than the plant grow. it has much higher peaks of red and blue with actinics and more uv -a uv-b and infrared spectrum

Aquarium Life Roseate 650 graph . Just another vg grow bulb http://www.aquaticlife.com/products2/341#1

PetFlora said:

Aquarium Life Roseate 650 graph . Just another vg grow bulb http://www.aquaticlife.com/products2/341#1

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WEAK SAUCE!!!!!!. the largest spike is green. There's more wasted light in that one than all the others.

hyroot said:

WEAK SAUCE!!!!!!. the largest spike is green. There's more wasted light in that one than all the others.

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THOSE ARE THE "GROW" BULBS LOL....you know the ones that these hydroponics dealers sell you!!
no one listens to me...

pr0fesseur said:

THOSE ARE THE "GROW" BULBS LOL....you know the ones that these hydroponics dealers sell you!!
no one listens to me...

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I think both you and hyroot are looking at the 6000k graph, not the Roseate graph (labeled "650nm"!) Both can be found at that link and it opens up to the 6000k graph.

It is not surprising that a 6000k graph should look like a 'Grow' (6500k) graph, but the Roseate is clearly different.

We've been over this bulb a few times in this thread already. It is the clearest graph available to us as it shows specifically what percentage of its output is in each range of wavelengths. If you can live with a little over 25% of your base bulb in the green/yellow range, this bulb is fine for you. If not, what bulb are you using? To my eye, this is the 3rd best base bulb (behind the Plant Grow and Flora Sun - I'm not counting the false Fiji graph).

PAR T5 Community, here's a bulb comparison.

At lights on yesterday, one of the two Fiji Purples burned out - one day after the immediate replacement seller's warranty. I sent an email to reefgeek and popped in a 6,500k from veg until a replacement could be found.

A local pet shop carries CoraLife bulbs for $14 a piece (2ft). Taken as an opportunity to test a Fiji alternative, the CoraLife ColorMax was purchased. It was available in only the 14w so bear in mind that it is being overdriven in the following picture (pardon the burns).

From top to bottom, where 'X' is empty; ColorMax, X, X, Fiji





To add to the "graphs are not the gospel" comment made by falcon223, this bulb is producing a lot of green for the printed SPD chart.



Note that this is NOT the graph on their website; it appears that the +600nm values (from the graph on the site) have been added to the single red spike.


...

To the rejection of my suspicions, this is not the Fiji Purple with a different label; good to know. Further, it's good to get the 6,500k out and something that resembles PAR in.


Happy experimenting.

In fact, I LOVE that 6000k graph. It's a great baseline to compare against.

First off, I was wrong about 25+% green/yellow, because I was looking at the 6000k graph at the time.

The Roseate has about 21% green/yellow vs ~27% in the 6000k (Grow bulb). It has 21.5% red instead of ~3%. The higher blue drops a bit but the UV and violet is higher than in the 6000k bulb.

I wish we had a similarly graphed "Bloom bulb" to compare with.

If you want to know how a graph translates visually to percentage of output by color, LOOK AT THESE TWO GRAPHS - http://www.aquaticlife.com/products2/341#1

The reality is we're not going to find a base bulb that doesn't have a decent amount of green/yellow -at least not right now. What we can do to maximize our efficiency is use the best base bulb/s we can find and enhance appropriately with "booster" bulbs (actinics, red suns, etc.)

To me, partly what this means is not to bother with a 75/25 bulb - use a booster for that spectrum (450) as desired because efficiency is available to us there. Get your white light in the base bulb.

overTHEman said:

To add to the "graphs are not the gospel" comment made by falcon223, this bulb is producing a lot of green for the printed SPD chart.

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Don't forget the green and yellow light will naturally appear much brighter to your eye than the other wavelengths. I've noticed my Flora Suns look much more pink when I take a picture of them than they do to my naked eye.

Yeah they no longer make the planta, only the Plant Grow. This is an e-mail I received from Albert @ aquasythe.com

Thank you for contacting us.
Please note that Aqua Medic no longer makes Planta lamps. They replace them with current model called Plant Grow.
Thank you for choosing AquaSythe for your aquatic needs. You are a valued customer and we look forward to hearing from you in the future.

If we can be of any additional assistance, please feel free to contact our Customer Service Department at 1-224-656-5865 or via email at customerservice@aquasythe.com and we will be happy to answer any question(s) you may have.

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I was under the initial impression that the Planta had just been renamed/marketed as the Plant Grow. Where was the updated graph for the Plant Grow available again?