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marshydroreview
I took some time to put my thoughts together on this one, so here goes...
Please check out my grow journal below. This was for my second ever grow. I used 2 Mars Hydro SP-3000's in my 4x4 tent. The tent is a cheap viparspectra that I would gladly upgrade to a MarsHydro tent.
In my second ever grow, using soil, autopots and Megacrop nutrients, using 2 SP-3000's, I pulled almost 2 lbs from 4 plants. Let that sink in for a minute. 6 months later, my personal medical needs are still more than covered.
I couldn't be happier with the SP-3000 lights I'm using. They completely saturate the 4x4 grow area, and using the $5 Photone app, I'm able to accurately dial in the DLI (Daily Light Integral) for my autoflowers on the 20x4 schedule I'm running. Dialing in the DLI like this leaves both lights set at under 75% most of the time, lengthening their shelf life and ensuring the plants don't get more than they can handle, and I'm not paying for more energy than needed.
It is safe to say that 2 SP-3000's is MORE than enough light for a 4x4. When growing autoflowers in an automated feeding process, the bottlenecks to growth become incredibly important. By this, I mean that any variable that could affect growth being sub-optimal will result in less quantity than is possible given the plant's potential. Light, or lack thereof, is perhaps the biggest potential bottleneck, so getting the full DLI to your plants every day ensures they put on as much growth as possible. And once you solve for the light bottleneck with a couple SP-3000's, you can then focus on secondary bottlenecks to growth like VPD, pH, soil health, pruning, etc.
I've run a few types of lights in my tents so far, starting with cheap Amazon blurples, to the Mars Hydro TS-600. Both are fine for a small small tent and a plant or two, but to really unlock the true growth potential of your autoflowers, I can't recommend the SP-3000's enough. I can even envision one in a 4x4 generating well over a pound of flower without breaking a sweat.
As for tent temps, the drivers stay remarkably cool and can even detach from the manifold for external placement if high temps are an issue in your area. For me, indoors in the PNW, when running at 75% they bring my tent to an almost ideal 78-79 degrees farenheit. I actually leave them on 24x7 to "cook" freshly recharged soil a few days at around 78 degrees before adding my germinated seeds.
The one piece of advice I would give out to get the most out of these incredible lights is to grab that Photone app, since most likely you will be dialing these down a little to match your extended autoflower light schedules. This is a GOOD thing, as it can only extend the life of the lights themselves, and save you energy costs along the way.
Two unequivocal thumbs up for the SP-3000. I can't imagine the results using their next gen bar lights!
i was lucky enough to win a comp like this a couple or so years ago
i won the sp250 a review in this section and i believe it was actually complete on that place we left to one very strange summer
.
so overall a full growth light that out performs its watts, i believe the light spectrum is out performed by newer models but was a game changer for mars at that time,,,i got an early model its actual watts is 236 i think
other well i got an oversized tent and a undersized light now
