I suppose maybe we are just idiots. You could easily DIY a superior LED in every possible way for less money than a MARs light, but im an idiot for suggesting it. Its not like you have a functional eye and a functional hand to do it right? If its about efficiency, you can easily blow MARS away watt for watt, especially with a DIY LED, HPS, or a DE HPS. If its about price, you can blow MARs away $ for $ especially with a DIY LED, HPS, or a DE HPS. If its about justifying your actions and calling everyone else that has a brain an idiot your free to do it, this is the internet after all. Sure if your ENTIRE budget for lights is $50 you can use the MARs light as an excuse. But I would bet you could cancel your internet for a month or two and build a nice fixture for yourself and not be the idiot anymore.
My "idiot" DIY panel is currently clearing out our old soil moms (8 of them) to make way for an additional pots for a hydro expansion. They grew up under 600W of T5, and have been there in 3 gallon pots - most of them over a year - months before I even picked them up. Meanwhile an "idiot" DE HPS is making quick work of the 15 hydro pots next to it. I had more plants than planned so im having to spread the light a little thin - but we should easily be pulling over 1.2 GPW even in this less than ideal, no maintenance grow. I top off my barrels every day (3 minutes with a hose), check the clones (5 minutes) adjust PH (1 minute, i'm anal about a 5.8 PH and we see a .1 to .2 rise daily) and then once every 5 weeks we dump barrels and refill (30 minutes). Could I pull over the 1.2 GPW? Sure easily, but my time is valuable because im a well paid professional (an engineer even) - It doesn't make financial sense for me to do it. Im not going to spend time pulling off leaves and clipping branches. Im not even going to trim these - why trim it myself when I can just got to work for a couple hours and pay people to trim this all for me in an hour.These guys just woke up to day 10 in flower, the DE is on a mover just to cover the space until we get the soil plants out of the way and can cram in another DE to distribute the light. That bamboo is 4ft. Please explain how a MARS light cold ever be beneficial to this room? Are you going to be pulling 1.2 GPW? How many hours is that going to take you? How many grams are you going to pull and whats your total KWH reading for your grow? Your light able to support plants that have a 2ft difference in canopy height without issue right? I know its a fools errand to try to bring you to reality, I don't know why I waste my time. Maybe I am the idiot.
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and yes hps and mh are far more superior lights but with enough skill and know how leds seem to be working great for vegging, and i say that because this is my first run using leds and i guess my 20 years experience seems to be paying off because my mars is working just fine for vegging. I live in the desert and have had no heating issues with the led. So if mars is following this thread please make check payable to grumpy toker. Thank you
don't lump him in with the rest like those A-holes do. And I don't recommend giving your money to communist businesses who you have little to no recourse against and not to small tax-paying American business owners, some of whom have actual real world experience growing cannabis. Yeah I'm an asshole, huh? And they are not, not, not Hondas. They're actually like some Chinese POS car though that's just my biased opinion. And I've grown big fat buds with shit lights too. Doesn't mean it was quality bud. But again that's my bias talking, not my experience right?