15 reds 3 blues and nothing else?
Well, (kef, kef) I'm dealing with some slow-maturing strains. Of course, I tweak and adjust allaway through. So, over a long time frame like that, hermie's gotta play around a little.

I did an all-LED "test grow" under just a Procyon and my 6 + 2, right after I retired my 400 watt HPS. I pretty well matched the 400 with that setup, and since I was used to dealing with all that HPS heat I added some 3000K fluoros for sidelighting and topside supplementals at the edge of my primary light footprint. I would rather have just added more leds, but I got too sick to build anything for awhile there. It didn't make sense to me to hamstring my production just so I could wave a "100% LED grown" banner, so I just added the extra fluoros: a coupla 3000K 2' T5HO's (48W total) and about 80 watts (actual, Hermie don't play dat million-watt-equivalent crap) of 3000K CFL's. That "didn't hurt anything," but it didn't have much positive impact, either. It was real clear that the action was happenin' under the 660's.

So, when I was well enough I built another light (7 + 1) and added a couple more reds to the 6 + 2. So there's my 15 + 3. This whole system was still below the HPS heat-wise, so I added a couple 2x2' T5HO lights for 96 more watts. Not 'cause I needed them, but I was used to dealing with all that heat from the HID--so I lit 'em up, just cause I had 'em. So, I had ~225W @ 3000K T5/CFL, with maybe 350 watts of LED, including the Procyon. :thumbsup: At that point heat started becoming an issue again.

I positioned the fluoros very close to various buds (IMO, the only way they work well) and marked pot positions so I could keep things relatively consistent--certain areas got blasted with fluoro long term, other areas received only what I ASSUME was an inconsequential amount of reflected 3000K light. It appeared that the best bud development and the finest trichs occurred in the areas receiving the least "accidental" white light (almost zero) and the strongest dose of 660 red.

For late flowering, in general, I wound up disconnecting one of the blues on the 8+2, and running the remaining single blue on each lamp at low intensity. For finishing an 'outdoor' sativa I cut the light cycle by an hour (went to 11 on / 13 dark), turned the remaining 2 blues down to "idle" and backed off most of the reds a bit, too. (But that plant was nearing the end of her life cycle when things naturally slow down.) By this time I had removed the Procyon--it didn't appear the plants were even noticing it when I had the 660's cranked up, other than to stop stretch to the point of inhibiting vertical growth.

I left the T5's in there for work lights and photos, but didn't run them unless I had the bloomery all opened up --the power use and heat production didn't seem justified by any improved plant responses. So: there was some WW light in the bloomery from time to time, but it didn't seem to be doing anything that justified the added heat. (EXCEPT creating "stickybud"--a separate topic )

The bud pictured below was dead center under the 660's, right between 2 blues, too. (And well away from any fluoros.) I was getting leaf-bleaching and light-avoidance, and wound up disconnecting one of the blues and raising the light a bit. There's a "saturation point" for cramming high-power emitters onto a 100in^2 heatsink, at which you have to raise the light more than 6" above the plant tops OR drop the current below 1200mA. In my grow space, with the mutt genetics I have, that point is at 7+1. Cramming an 8th red emitter on the sink still gives a great bloom ratio, but unless I were to spread them out further on a bigger heatsink the light is too intense. Raising the lamp lets the light spread too much (IMO), and running the emitters at half-power is really poor planning.

This is a concept I'd like to get across to JJ: now that we have the ability to overwhelm a plant with light, we need to be start being real selective with our colors. Even the Procyon can't compete with the 660's for flower. Not even close. :thumbsup:

I know you, WT, and Appolonia have all experienced the light-overload phenomena. (The lenses on the Procyon's Crees make it easy to do.) The bleaching, stalled growth, and "ram's horns" (as Appolonia called it) are hard to miss. I don't recall reading anything similar from Old Mac, but it's hard to imagine he hasn't made some reefer plants say "uncle" with his T1's, too. Trying to explain this to a close-minded LED sceptic is difficult; no one who's got a lasting impression of leds as novelty panels is going to believe this is possible--"Too much light? No such thing..." :yeahright:

But this bud? LED grown only (aside from the above-confessed incidental WW pollution) with what I decided later was "more blue than necessary." The Goddess rolled a joint with some of this bud last night, thinking it was something less potent. By the time we figured out she had been nosing around in the wrong jars....

*Uh, oh...*

I could hardly move my hands. I shudder to review whatever chess move I may have made. I also lost a day again. :stoned:

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