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LED lighting advice please


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22 minutes ago, manders said:

1W of white LED's is going to be a lot cheaper to buy than 1W of red/blue/whatever growlights and the plants seem to do better under the white light.

So far, and i have tried lots of different lights, the white LEDs are my favourite for a whole bunch of reasons.

OK, so I'm going to have a go with white and see how I get on. You said you could find them for around £10 on ebay. I just had a look, and the only ones I could see were low wattage, like 3W and 5W. I didn't see anything like the 35W mentioned here.

can you give me an idea what you mean? Any links would be great.

Thanks again

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41 minutes ago, mobile said:

I don't know what sort manders uses but I've certainly used 36W red/blue growlights. These are similar to mine but in in white: https://goo.gl/2DlySI

Thats what i've been using, PAR38 (a measure of the physical size) in warm white.  I ordered several, one was broke, the rest have been going for several months with no problems.

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12 hours ago, manders said:

Theoretically the red/blue are supposed to be more efficient, I tried them and personally i dont like the way they look and secondly i seem to get burnt out chloroplasts on some of the plants and they simply didn't grow well enough and looked odd..

 

 

Were you using them at the same distance than the white ones? Because I've found that even they look less bright to our eyes, they can really burn delicate plants when used too close or at the same distance.

I used both white an red/blue lamps made with 5730 LED chips and the last ones gave me way better results, in both growing speed and pitcher color.

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24 minutes ago, Whitefox said:

Were you using them at the same distance than the white ones? Because I've found that even they look less bright to our eyes, they can really burn delicate plants when used too close or at the same distance.

I used both white an red/blue lamps made with 5730 LED chips and the last ones gave me way better results, in both growing speed and pitcher color.

Tried various distances, allways got better results with a CFL.  But i think thats part of the problem, LED grow lights are a still relatively new and no-ones quite sure what the best combination of lights are, if all you want to do is grow plants then white lights are a safer option.  Also as you've found, you have to include white lights to get good growth and I like the plants to be easily and continually visible.

One thing i would mention about the warm white lights is that on some plants, theres a noticeable improvement in sturdiness when taken out of a terrarium and put in natural light.  Therefore mixing more blue in there (daylight lamps) may well be better.  Net time i order some lights ill get daylight ones to see how that works.

 

 

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3 hours ago, manders said:

Thats what i've been using, PAR38 (a measure of the physical size) in warm white.  I ordered several, one was broke, the rest have been going for several months with no problems.

Any reason why you chose warm white? I thought that cool white wold give a wider spectrum. Isn't that what daylight bulbs are?

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2 hours ago, manders said:

One thing i would mention about the warm white lights is that on some plants, theres a noticeable improvement in sturdiness when taken out of a terrarium and put in natural light.  Therefore mixing more blue in there (daylight lamps) may well be better.  Net time i order some lights ill get daylight ones to see how that works.

That's something I was going to ask about. If I grow them under these lights, and then want to move them out (which I would when they grow bigger), how well would they adjust?

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I would be tempted to use a combination or warm and cool white in order to get a better spectrum spread. It's not really possible to be sure without seeing the spectral graph, but warm white is likely to have higher output in the red end and cool in the blue end.

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22 minutes ago, mobile said:

I would be tempted to use a combination or warm and cool white in order to get a better spectrum spread. It's not really possible to be sure without seeing the spectral graph, but warm white is likely to have higher output in the red end and cool in the blue end.

OK, that makes sense. I haven't yet worked out how I'm going to do the setup, so not sure how I would manage a combination. I think I'm going to end up with a wide area, but not too deep (front to back), so I would have to alternate the lights along the length.

Thanks again

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4 hours ago, manders said:

I use the warm white ones which can look a bit yellowy, but you can see the light penetrates nice and deep and works well with large terrariums, heres my three species of vanilla romping away...

Looks excellent. Two questions...

1) What do you use on the back of the bulbs? Ty current setup uses standard fittings like you'd use in a room. These are fine, but add quite a bit to the height of the light. The spot where I'm looking to build my new growing area doesn't have as much height as I'd like, and I'm looking to find fittings that don't take up much space. Your look good for that.

2) What sort of spread do you get with those bulbs? I see they have 60 degs and 120 degs, and so I would probably go for the wider ones, but I'm a bit worried that with only about 12" from the bulb to the top of the pots, I would need a lot of bulbs (ie major cash) to avoid small pools of light with darker areas between.

Thanks again

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Just now, mobile said:

Spread will be highly dependant on the type of lamp you use and the lenses fitted, if they have lenses. Certainly the E27 variety I have, which look like the ones manders has, have lenses fitted.

I was looking at the ebay ones linked earlier. I don't have any others to compare!

So, based on the fact that they look like yours, I would presumably get something like the spread you do. Any idea what that would be at a height of around 12"?

Thanks

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1 hour ago, Yossu said:

Looks excellent. Two questions...

1) What do you use on the back of the bulbs? Ty current setup uses standard fittings like you'd use in a room. These are fine, but add quite a bit to the height of the light. The spot where I'm looking to build my new growing area doesn't have as much height as I'd like, and I'm looking to find fittings that don't take up much space. Your look good for that.

2) What sort of spread do you get with those bulbs? I see they have 60 degs and 120 degs, and so I would probably go for the wider ones, but I'm a bit worried that with only about 12" from the bulb to the top of the pots, I would need a lot of bulbs (ie major cash) to avoid small pools of light with darker areas between.

Thanks again

I bought some ceramic light fittings of ebay that are normally used for chicken coops etc, and some wire, that way you can make the wire as long as you want it.

I used 60deg because the terrarium is quite tall, therefore my spread is 60Degrees. :)

A wider angle is fine if you want the bulbs closer to the plants.  In my case a wide angle would just waste a lot fo the light.

 

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2 hours ago, Yossu said:

Any reason why you chose warm white? I thought that cool white wold give a wider spectrum. Isn't that what daylight bulbs are?

Red light is actually really good for growth, but is known to make plants a bet leggy.  Daylight bulbs might have a lot of green light whch is pretty much wasted.  A good combination might be warm white mixed with blue LED...

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1 minute ago, manders said:

Red light is actually really good for growth, but is known to make plants a bet leggy.  Daylight bulbs might have a lot of green light whch is pretty much wasted.  A good combination might be warm white mixed with blue LED...

Ooh, now you're confusing me again!

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2 hours ago, Yossu said:

That's something I was going to ask about. If I grow them under these lights, and then want to move them out (which I would when they grow bigger), how well would they adjust?

They adjust very quickly, I think most plants grow much better under natural light than any kind of artifical light and often there is a growth spurt when you take plants out of a terrarium (provided humidity is not too different).

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3 minutes ago, Yossu said:

Ooh, now you're confusing me again!

Truth is they will grow under either warm white of cool white and i think different plants respond differently in any case.  The best kind of light is natural daylight and anything else is a compromise.

Edited by manders
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5 minutes ago, manders said:

I bought some ceramic light fittings of ebay that are normally used for chicken coops etc, and some wire, that way you can make the wire as long as you want it.

I used 60deg because the terrarium is quite tall, therefore my spread is 60Degrees. :)

A wider angle is fine if you want the bulbs closer to the plants.  In my case a wide angle would just waste a lot fo the light.

Just done some calculations, and assuming my schoolboy trig is correct, a 120degs angle at a height of 12" would give a  spread of about 40" which is excellent.

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1 minute ago, manders said:

Truth is they will grow under either warm white of cool white and i think different plants respond differently in any case.  The best kind of light is natural daylight and anything else is a compromise.

True enough, but as I have some plants that won't grow outside in the winter, and some that I want to grow inside this winter (sarracenia seedlings that I want to try skipping dormancy in the first year to see if they grow any better), I don't have much choice. I want to give them the best chance.

As we are trying to simulate natural light, I would have thought that cool white bulbs were best, which is why I asked about this above. I was under the impression that they were the closest thing to natural daylight. I was surprised at the suggestions of using blue/red or warm white.

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19 minutes ago, Yossu said:

True enough, but as I have some plants that won't grow outside in the winter, and some that I want to grow inside this winter (sarracenia seedlings that I want to try skipping dormancy in the first year to see if they grow any better), I don't have much choice. I want to give them the best chance.

As we are trying to simulate natural light, I would have thought that cool white bulbs were best, which is why I asked about this above. I was under the impression that they were the closest thing to natural daylight. I was surprised at the suggestions of using blue/red or warm white.

Its a very complicated compromise, plants phtosynthesise the most with red and blue light, as thats what chlorophyll a and b absorbs.  Thats why the most 'efficent' way to grow plants is thought be with red/blue LED (any why pants look green as they dont use green light).  Green light is what looks brightest to humans.  So reproducing 'daylight' produces a lot of green light that plants simply dont use and therfore its not the most efficient (ie uses/wastes more electricity) .

What makes it complicated is that plants have other pigments other than chlorophyll and these absorb other wavlenghts of light to do other usefull things.  Some plants even deliberatley use this trick to survive in deep shade by utiising wavelenghths other plants just don't use.  I have one which grows really well in the deepest darkest corner of the greenhouese underneath a bench where even ferns struggle.

You wouldnt go far wrong with either warm white or daylight or a mix of both.  Ideally though you want a bulb that has more red and blue in it but inevitably they are more expensive as they are not 'mass market'. 

 

 

Edited by manders
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