About those LED lights

[MonkeyRacket]

Cool, keep us posted.. what temperatures are you using for the kratom? I know that LEDs can degrade faster at higher temps but I'm not sure what those are... Maybe BigBlock can enlighten us. Cannabis only really needs 60-70F to do well depending on strain.

Have you noticed any increase in growth since using the LEDs? They're your plants but for experimental reasons you could try covering up the fluorescent a bit so it's still generating heat but not shining much on the plants.

[Crispyfried]

Kratom needs at least 70 for decent growth, so I've got to keep it warm until it's well established. It grows too slow to tell if the LEDs did much. As soon as my temps get close to 80 I'm going to switch to the LEDs and one or two cheap CFLs. I'm going to put the CFLs on the sides of the box and see if the plants grow towards the CFLs or up to the LEDs. My array of led bars covers the entire growing area so this should be effective.

[MonkeyRacket]

Cool, how many bars did you get? They are the pro model right?

[MonkeyRacket]

I'm very skeptical about the Solaroasis claim that 1 Grobar is equivalent to 100-125 watts of HID lighting but I may consider picking up a bar to play around with - if it sucks I'll just grow lettuce under it or something. The penetration from an LED matrix isn't going to be that great but I suppose you could compensate by using side-lighting or utilizing a SCROG setup.

[Crispyfried]

I've got two pro bars and two reg bars. I would recommend that you get a pro bar. I'm guessing that one pro bar combined with two or so cheap full spectrum CFLs should be great for one or two plants. I'm really getting so curious about the grow bars that I may have to switch over to them very soon, but I'll have to see what the temperature forecast is.

[MonkeyRacket]

Yeah the pro bar is pretty new, I think it came out just this January. If start seeing some good reports or if my friend's experiment works out okay I will probably grab 6 pro bars and set them up in an experimental 4-5 sqft cab.

[Crispyfried]

Six bars would be cool, especially if it really does equal over 600 watts of HID lighting. And you can't get more stealthy than LED.

[FERMENTATION]

Crispyfried: Could you post a detailed pic of the bulb area (for an LED count) or you could just coult them yourself and post them nm of th individual bulbs. I'm curious as to what they put in the probar. The patent isn't on the PO site yet as I don't think the probar patent has been accepted yet. Did they send you any information on what wavelengths the bar contians?

I'm pretty sure the above makes sense. Lets jus say, it's a good thing yall don't have to see my handwriting right now. To bed with me. Oh, thanks CF for posting about the bars I am very curious to see how well they work.

Fermentation

[turtle420]

Oh, thanks CF for posting about the bars I am very curious to see how well they work.

Seconded.

Yeah, when possible, pictures. Please...

[Crispyfried]

There are 38 LEDs per "bulb" on the pro bar, so 114 LEDs total. The bars come with a light spectrum graph for the ruby pro gro bar, it weakly covers from 400nm to 600nm, and strongly covers wavelenghts from about 630 to 700nm, and also from like 710 or 720 to maybe 760nm. The strongest coverage corresponds with the "chlorophyll A red absorption peak", and the second strongest peak corresponds with the "far-red flowering and budding" area, while the third peak corresponds with the "chlorophyll B blue absorption peak", and is near the "chlorophyll A blue absorption peak". These blue spectrum peaks are around 460nm, while the red peaks are from like 630 to 760nm. All of these peaks are outside of the wavelengths that are visible by the human eye, and the grow bars really hardly give off any visible light, so they are probably giving off the right wavelenghts. I had an LED flashlight with one LED bulb and that thing was super bright, so the grow bars must be giving off a huge amount of light that just isn't visible.