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battonfive

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Posts posted by battonfive

  1. Welcome to the forum :-) It does seem quite ironic that you are cataloguing the insects with them now being the main dinner for your c.p :-D hmm im afraid i cant advise on the ppm, i dont really have the experience, i would say rain water or distilled water is best, rain seems slightly better from the looks. With the soil i tend to do a mix of silica sand, washed and drained coir and some frest pete, the less nutrients in the soil is the best path to take. The c.p have evolved to take their nutrients from the insects and seem to have a habit of browning, root burning and dying if you have to many minerals in the growing medium you are using :-)

     

    Hope it helps any

     

    Paul

    Manchester

     

    ah and there are many cultivars out there for the cps, some recorded others hybrids and un-recorded, you could check flytrapstore.com for the vft, but sorry not sure about the others, perhaps this forum and a google search on the specific species with the words 'cultivars' after the species name.

  2. Welcome to the forums :-) i do love the vft's, glad the forums have prooven helpful, good luck with your collection there. If you have any questions you know where we are give us a shout :-D

     

    Paul

    Manchester

  3. welcome to the c.ps :-) cacti sound prickly fun :-D can you perhaps open the light up to the greenhouse? could you wing a small solar setup to run some leds lights perhaps :-) im sure someone on here may be able to assist :-) a warmer greenhouse will likely humour the cps you grow to life a bit more :-)

     

    have fun on the forums

    Paul

  4. Hello everybody.

    I've been reading up the forum for a while now and decided to register.

    I'm originally from Portugal where I used to have a decent collection of carnivourous plants. Unfortunately when I moved to the UK about 2 and a half years ago I had to donate my collection as I couldn't bring them with me. And as my partner is from newcastle here we are :P

    Ive had been fascinated by this amazing plants for a good few years and I'm specially interested in droseras, cephalotus, sarracenias and nepenthes.

    I am no expert and I can't wait to start building up a new collection again.

    I can't wait for some advice for some of the most experienced growers around here which I'm sure will be alot more comfortable growing on the "lovely" british weather :P

     

    must be better weather up there than it is in Manc down here :-p probably really is, its always overcast in Manchester so we don't get a dense sunlight to often :-) Its why I made this little grow station rather than relying on our sun :-D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIaBonlDxN4 its probably possible to grow the c.p. in a little green house or on the window ledges up north though so its not the end of the world :-p

     

    mmm Portugal weather would be lovely :-D

     

    Look forward to see how your plants do :-) don't forget to post us some photos and updates :-p

     

    welcome to the forums

     

    Paul

  5. It is indeed quite a project, battonfive!  It looks like SMD5050-based strip (i.e. each diode is 5mm x 5mm)?  How much total wattage going in the entire shelf?

     

    yep im sure its a SMD5050 to, rings a bell from when I was looking in to the chips, they are about 5mm x 5mm :-) epistar led 5w chips I think they are called. they are weird looking chips I must admit they look more like little microchips rather than the usual diodes, really strange :-D the three tiers of the shelving come to about 590-610w in total, im running a psu with 20 strips at 187w, a psu at 23 strips at 215w and a third psu with 22 strips at 205w, where each psu is consuming 7-10w to run each onboard psu fan :-)

    • Like 1
  6. Nice growing set up on your video ;-)

     

    thanks ji :-) i used these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/351548644827?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT which have pretty decent 5w led chips in them, they don't spit out 5w but i imagine the 3w led chips don't spit out 3w either, so its the lesser of the two evils :-) mixing those with the cheap psu's http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/361358055393?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT it feels like for the wattage to light output they are actually not to bad :-D 20 strips are coming in at 187w, while each strip is hot to the touch running a nice 9w a strip and there are 34 leds per strip so its powering 680 leds nice for 187w :-)

    • Like 1
  7. Hey Paul nice to see you guys are still clinging on down there :-D also I really like the choice of Dionaea cultivars you are going for there :-) good to see you getting back in to it and keep us posted on your progress with your garden :-D

     

    Paul

    Manchester

  8. Maybe Chinese wholesalers on ebay will help, if I needed a grow light, I would write a ebay message, you click ask a question on the led listing, then select the option "how to use the item", like this -

    Hello "wholesaler name here",

    my monkey plants (Nepenthes) are lacking of the lighting in this the 猴子的一年 (year of the Monkey).

    I want to buy these good leds,   x nnn leds, and also buy your correct products to make them work, I follow this YouTube tutorial as outline (add link).

    Please send me links to your products I can buy to make the led growing light for Monkey plants.

    Or a link for a diy kit to buy all components together...

     

    thank you for the input and good advice to contact the vendor to see if they could arrange the correct setup, but I must admit for lummens to wattage naoki does have a point. For a larger area like for what the 'super bright led panel' provides, I would want to use some 'sunmaster pro' bulbs to be honest. I found for wattage to lumen return the leds are ok for shelving like I have made here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqDWejeXIKE

     

    but that really only works because the power supply is so cheap and I made additional efforts to fix the wiring, to do that on a larger scale would take a lot more work so I would then take the hps bulbs :-)

     

    hope it helps :-D

     

     

    ...it is probably the most efficient grow light (in terms of PAR efficacy)  available at a reasonable cost.  The radiant efficiency (proportion of electric energy converted to light energy) is > 50% with CXB3590.  Best HPS is slightly lower, and fluorescent light is around 30%.  Vero 29 isn't so far behind.   With this much light, going with a cheap fixture is a false economy; you'll be paying more for electricity in a long term due to their inefficiency (those cut-to-size LED strips have notoriously low efficiency).  

    • Like 1
  9. I can recommend 2mm Perspex for fixing up and building little green houses, its not great on security but for £25 for a 6ft x 4ft sheet, you can make some decent sized customised structures with a dremel drill and a cutting disc head :-) also for lighting led grow lights could come in handy to boost natural light, check the topic of grow lights in the forums for more info :-)

     

    Im looking for a new terrarium as my green house broke down im also i need of lights for them if i get a terrarium just asking if any of you guys have any glass tanks or stuff - Sabian Mehmetaj

     

    To you other guys I would love to see your collections of c.p's :-) im just starting out but I find them a really intriguing set of species :-D

  10. Thank you for the share, I heard rumor that you could grow in just fresh peat but I have not been happy with the results, I would say its do-able but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I like you coir/sand experimentation here. I am going to try a third "Play Sand", a third Fresh Pete and a third coir to see if I can get any better results. Big thanks for giving the reminder to wash the coir well, saved a lot of pain there, im much obliged :-)

     

    I'll post some pics or maybe a vid of what I have in mind when I will repot my dionaea fused tooth over this week :-) will be interesting to see what the results are like down the line :-D Im hoping it will do pretty well under led grow light to help stop any scorching but get a high density of lumens :-)

     

    I have been experimenting with coir (from coconut husks) as a growing medium and substitute or alternative to sphagnum peat moss for about 2.5 years, and began a side-by-side experiment about 14 months ago. Although Sarracenia seem to prefer sphagnum peat moss, Venus Flytraps thrive in coir.

    Last year in April I potted 6 medium-sized B52 Venus Flytraps with similar-sized bulbs, by first separating them into two groups of three, then planting each group of three into a 10-inch diameter pot. Both pots are identical polyurethane foam planters, and the Venus Flytraps have grown together in exactly the same conditions and with the same care regimen for the last 14 months....

     

  11. Here is a making video.

    this is a very clever way of building studio lights but its worth noting the grow leds take more amps than this circuit provides so one couldn't just swap out with the neutral white regular led strips :-) but for filming this is a bob-on build, cant imagine a better more efficient way of doing it :-)

    • Like 1
  12. Cheapest to buy and run is probably HPS (high pressure sodium). A lot cheaper to buy than LED and in most cases you get more lumens per watt.

    If you go for LED you will need somewhere around 200-400W. That should give you around 4000lux, allowing for losses.

    hps definitely give the more lumens for the wattage, but im hoping that these 12v led grow strips will make up for it as I would usually swap out a hps after 6 months where with these leds im told they are good for some years :-) I do like the hps for some heat though, I like good evaporation :-D with these led strips I got off ebay http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/351548644827?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT they look promising but they definetly need a rewiring so each strip is running direct from your psu, as they come the rails cant transfer the wattages down the line so by a couple of strips in they are bright but only taking 3w rather than the 9.2w they are getting in parrallel which seems suitable for each strip to work nicely :-)

     

    cant wait to put my feedback down on how the led strips perform :-) 20 strips of 36 leds per strip is taking 187w which is covering about 1.8m x 0.4m x 0.4m space :-D

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