AlienBait Tries LEDs, Part 2

My curiousities as to WHY your veg growth looks nicer with the LED but the flower-power is more readily noticed with the HPS.

This to me is strange, could it have something to do with the direct heat transfer from the HPS? I know you said at one time that you had too much blue, and you removed some, but maybe you don't have enough?

Also, do you have a picture of the plant under the HPS? I saw your LED grow, but was curious to see if you had any reflective mylar or other similar items with your HPS setup? I was thinking that the HPS might be reflective off more surfaces where as the LED might be absorbed by the white surfaces it looks like you have in your LED grow area? Since it's a more narrowed lightwave?

Hmm...

On another note, I will be trying to setup my LED get together tomorrow, but am still waiting for my poly to come in to setup a divider/reflector.

md.apothecary said:

My curiousities as to WHY your veg growth looks nicer with the LED but the flower-power is more readily noticed with the HPS.

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I wish I knew the answer to that one. I think that the plants need more than just red and blue to fully flower. There might be some other light frequency that triggers hormones or something. My original plan was to try adding some different colored LEDs into the mix. So I bought some Warm White, infra-red, yellow, aqua, ultra Violet and green LEDs, but I seem to have misplaced them. Once I find them, I'll start another grow some time in the spring to see if the different colors actually do make a difference.

The manufacturer of these particular lights says that 4 of them are equivalent to a 500 Watt HID light, but I am not seeing that. That may be correct in the veg cycle only.

I have an infared lamp... I should try that later myself, it came with some camera equipment for night vision. pretty cool...

However, I think you're closer to the mark with the violet and green spectrums, as I have seen those lights advertised as PLANT lights as well, and if i remember correctly, I think they were LED's also!!

Hmm... there is a WHITE led on ebay advertised as a grow light.

I saw one LED grow on another site where the guy used Halogen light during flowering. I can't remember the reasoning but there was some logic behind it. From what I recall, the whole crop suffered root rot or something so his grow was scrapped early.

audix2359 said:

I saw one LED grow on another site where the guy used Halogen light during flowering. I can't remember the reasoning but there was some logic behind it. From what I recall, the whole crop suffered root rot or something so his grow was scrapped early.

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I've seen a couple of people do that. What they do is they have the halogen turn on for the last 15-30 minutes of the light period. The theory is that the plants will detect the far red spectrum being turned off and that is suppose to signal to the plant that "night" time has started. It's a strange theory, but they think it works. Their results, however, don't seem much different than mine.

To me, it makes no sense at all. If the LEDs are still on at this time, the PLANT is going to know it's not being tricked because that specific lightwave generates the chemical reaction within the plant. The plant doesn't use EYES to see the differences in the color temps/lights, it uses photosynthesis.

waste of time and money in my opinion to use a halogen for anything.

Nice gro AB.......

Those LED's of yours just dont cut it.......

As you say probably alright for slow veg....

They're designed for houseplants anyhow?..

which are mostly shade loving plants....

I think the theory right ...just need more uuummmph!

That cold cathode grow you got going looks good too......:aok:

Well, we are at the 6-week flowering point. Only 2 more weeks to go( + or - a few days).
I had to tie the LED plant down a little because it was outgrowing it's box. Other than that, the plants have just been doing their thing.
You might notice a little browning on the leaf tips. That's because I was trying to green-up the HSP plant a little by adding a little more nitrogen to the solution. It didn't work, just burned the leaves and REALLY burned the leaves on the LED plant, so I went back to the standard mixture.
The HPS plant is 25 inches tall (not counting the pot). The LED plant is tied down so it is 20 inches tall (not counting the pot).
Here are the pictures:
1) Both Plants: HPS plant on the left, LED plant on the right.
2) HPS Plant
3) LED Plant
4) HPS
5) LED
6) HPS
7) LED
8) One of my LED arrays blew up. One of the capacitors in the circuit board exploded and blew the light open. I had an extra one, so just replaced it.
9) Here is the circuit board. There is capacitor insulation all over the boards. I was not around when it happended, so I don't know how loud it was. Must have been somthing though, because those lights are glued together and hard to open.

They're both looking nice AB.

hi AB, my opinion on this after reading it from the start, is that you should use LEDs for veg, and maybe the first week of flower, then switch to HPS for the buds to fill out. the LED plant looks alot healthier than the HPS 1. that maybe the problem you had earlier with nute/PH, but this experiment shows that LED for veg & HPS for bud.

great white satins you got there mate, enjoy 85C

Nice comparison yet again alien!!
Those Caps stink to high heaven when they pop don't they.
I've had em pop and fizzle and other ones sound like a fire cracker. Glad nothing got damaged bro. Lookin forward to week 8

85cannabliss said:

hi AB, my opinion on this after reading it from the start, is that you should use LEDs for veg, and maybe the first week of flower, then switch to HPS for the buds to fill out. the LED plant looks alot healthier than the HPS 1. that maybe the problem you had earlier with nute/PH, but this experiment shows that LED for veg & HPS for bud.

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At this point it looks that way, but I am really trying to get away from using the HPS. The heat and electricity costs can be very high.

Also, I am thinking of doing Micro-Grows so I will need something that that will work in a small box.

The Cold Cathodes look promising. Perhaps I could veg with the LEDs and flower with the CC lights.

The LEDs work great for keeping my Mother plants nice and healthy.

Mutt said:

Those Caps stink to high heaven when they pop don't they.

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Yes, they do. I've blown them out before also and fried a few circuit boards in my time.

AlienBait said:

Yes, they do. I've blown them out before also and fried a few circuit boards in my time.

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In Lab we used to wait until the other dude was away and reverse the cap...funny when they hit the juice on those lil microfarad caps....puff of the nastiest smell right in the ole face. :rofl:
We were bored alot in lab. LOL

CRT's is what always bit my arse...yep, can't make an omlet without breaking a few eggs

(ignore me I'm fried)

Well, I had two more lights blow-up. I am going to end the experiment before any more blow up and start a fire. I am going to recommend that if any one is interested in buying LED lights, DO NOT buy them from Gro-Tek. So far 3 lights blew-up and I will not use them any more. I might take them apart and use the components to build my own arrays.

I already moved the LED plant into the closet with the HPS and will finish up the last two weeks in there.

I will keep this thread updated until harvest.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

That blows AB. Thanks for the heads up though. Any idea what could be causing them to blow?

bombbudpuffa said:

Any idea what could be causing them to blow?

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All three had the same capacitor blow, so I am going to guess that it is just not rated for the circuit they designed. Or it could just be a bad design.

I am going to un-solder the LEDs and make my own boards when I can find some free time (which could mean a year from now, LOL!).

It could also be power surges in your line. This is known to blow cheap capacitors. A simple spike will "pop" a capacitor causing it to explode, and my guess is that the pressure of the sealed flood light would cause them to literally explode.

I bought some LED's and I am hoping I don't have a similar problem, I got mine off eBay, so I don't know where they originated.

AlienBait said:

I am going to recommend that if any one is interested in buying LED lights, DO NOT buy them from Gro-Tek.

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I second that. I got some LED's from Gro-tek and although they have not exploded, I'm not too pleased with the results (could be me though). I am looking around for grows with the LED UFO though; that looks pretty interesting.

I've been doing some thinking...:holysheep:

We have seen in this thread that the red and blue LEDs are good for the veg phase. We got nice dark green foliage and the plant grew very nicely. However, when it came time to flower, we got very little. Remember, the manufacturer claims that 4 of my LED lights are equal to a 500Watt HID light. We have shown that, while that may be true in Veg, for flowering something more is needed.

We all know that HPS lights do a great job at flowering MJ and before the LED lights blew-up, the HPS light was out-producing the LED lights around 8 to 1 in terms of bud production.

My theory on this is that the plants need more than just red and blue light to fully flower, so I thought I would take a look at the output spectrum of the HPS light (an Eye-Hortolux in this case):



As you an see from the graph, the HPS does not peak in either of the places that the LED manufacturers tell us we need: around 650 for red and 450 for blue.

Here is a graph they like to post showing what frequency chlorophyll absorbs to prove their point:



It is not even close to the HPS spectrum and yet, the HPS is a bud producing machine. So, once again, I suggest that we need to think there is more to flowering than what the chlorophyll wants. We need to replicate the spectrum of the HPS light and forget about only using Red and/or Blue.

So, I think we need to get some aqua, orange, yellow, and yellowish-green LEDs and cut back on the blues and reds (keep them, just use a smaller percentage). Here is the ratio I would suggest, based on the HPS spectral chart:

10 Yellow-green (around 575nm)
10 Yellow (around 590nm)
10 Orange (around 610nm)
5 Red (around 625nm)
2 Deeper red (around 660nm)
2 Aqua (around 500nm)
1 Blue (around 470nm)

We may not be able to find LEDs in these exact wavelengths, but if it is close, I'm sure we can get by.

For experimenting, we can try pulling out different colors to see if they are really needed. But I would like to see a grow using this ratio of LEDs first just to see if I am on the right track.

While I was looking up LEDs, I found some "Warm-Whites."

Here is the spectral output for the Warm-White:



I went ahead and superimposed this chart onto the HPS chart and got this:



As we can see, it matches pretty well with the HPS spectrum, with the exception of the Aqua (around 500nm). If we use the Warm-White, we can always add a few Aqua LEDs to fill in the gap.

I think to make any progress in bringing LEDs into the MJ growing world beyond experiments, we need to forget about only using Red and Blue and look at what is working now (HPS), then try to replicate it.

Unfortunately I will have to stop for a while , but I wanted to get my thoughts out there while they were fresh, so when I am ready to give them another try, I can come back to this thread. I also wanted to post this in case some one else wants to give LEDs a go (in addition to those who are already doing it).