Lighting Which way to go

[Bilbo]

If you're going to veg under CFL bro you'll lose a lot of the advantages from having the wattage in the tent. The bushiness is just a symptom of the plant having enough light to do it's thing, it will stretch eventually (LED growing is a bit different to other lighting) and you'll end up with a big bushy plant covered in bud as opposed to a tall, spindly plant with bud at the top if you use just one 125w CFL.

I'm not knocking CFL and if you put the same true wattage in it would be a different story. Your 125w dual band CFL is about 30 watts true, so you would need 5 of them to match the roughly 150w true of just one 300w Mars panel.

 

[willywilson81]

right point made and taken. cant wait for it to get here, got some lemon kush to grow so i might break my led in with a photo grow. i'll defiantly be doing a diary. Oh and just so you know my 125w cfl is 1 of the big 1s (",)

 

[Bilbo]

Oh and just so you know my 125w cfl is 1 of the big 1s (",)

Mine's a 300w 9U red but still can't get close in wattage to my smallest old panel, a Vipar V240, it's 75w CFL vs 150w panel and a lot less of the consumed power being lost as heat!

Couple of downsides or things you'll need to get used to with LED's are;

Less heat, so your temps might go too low so you may need a fan controller to turn it to half speed. You can add a low wattage greenhouse tube heater or go for a 24/0 schedule and use your CFL to add some heat (or a combination of heater for lights off and CFL for light's on).

You need to add what will seem like ridiculous amounts of calmag supplement if you are coming from another type of light source. If you're growing autos which generally need less nutes than photos, adding so much calmag can push your EC/CF level higher than you like it but the calmag is essential so you have to juggle the nutes a bit more to keep the plant happy.

Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs bro, just seen a lot of people switch to LED and get caught out!

 

[willywilson81]

The info is much appreciated Bilbo. thats 1 of the many reasons i came here for info on leds. am i right in thinking tomato food is high in cal/mag? till trying to be a tight sod lol
Also EC/CF? i only check ph.

 

[Bilbo]

I'm not a soil grower willy so I know zero about it! TaNg has a good feed schedule stickied on the site and I'm pretty sure he can advise you on the best calmag additive if the info isn't there. PM him if you need advice and any questions I can answer just ask.

 

[Getgrowingson]

In response to your question about what is in the fertilizer. Bottles have a website stated on the bottle somewhere where you can view the analysis of what is in Any fertilizer product. Have a good look. Should be there aapfco.org

 

[willywilson81]

Thanks guys. Well some good news this morning as my panel is showing as dispatched so in the very near future i'll have it and can get underway. Been looking over the net and there are a lot of led grows now so fingers crossed things will go well. Very curious to see how I get on in my groom. Thinking I'll have to lower the floor to make sure I can get the light high enough so it'll be DIY time soon lol.