Grow light comparison

Voltaire77

New Member
Hey guy!

So I'm having a hard time choosing my grow lights. I have narrowed it down to Mars Hydro 600's but I would like some others to consider since it's hard finding good quality LED lighting. Considering my grow space and preference I want to stick to LED's.


4x Mars Hydro 600

-272W±5%
-Light Coverage: 2.5*2ft( Veg),2*1.5ft(Flowering)
- Lumens: 9122lm±5%


OR


2x Mars Hydro Reflector 144

-311W±5%
-Light Coverage: 4*3ft( Veg), 3.5*2.5ft(Flowering)
-7384lm±5%


According to the numbers the 4 600's will give me more wattage and more lumens total per sq. ft but the reflectors would have greater coverage. So I figure the 4 600's wouldn't be a bad option. I could just run a single 3' T5 light down the center to fill in some lighting. I drew up a 3D model of my grow space and DWC buckets with the 2 different light choices and the red showing their light coverage.

I'm just trying to see if my grow space will be worth it or not, in the model the grow space extends to the right to make it a "L" shape but that right side is a 1'+ shorter in height with about the same length and width as the portion of the model I did draw.

I will be growing my plants short using the manifolding technique trying to keep them short and bushy and lots of colas. Please let me know if anyone has any thoughts/opinions! Thanks :volcano-smiley:

Untitled176.jpg
 
Re: Grow light comparasion

Hey guy!

So I'm having a hard time choosing my grow lights. I have narrowed it down to Mars Hydro 600's but I would like some others to consider since it's hard finding good quality LED lighting. Considering my grow space and preference I want to stick to LED's.


4x Mars Hydro 600

-272W±5%
-Light Coverage: 2.5*2ft( Veg),2*1.5ft(Flowering)
- Lumens: 9122lm±5%


OR


2x Mars Hydro Reflector 144

-311W±5%
-Light Coverage: 4*3ft( Veg), 3.5*2.5ft(Flowering)
-7384lm±5%


According to the numbers the 4 600's will give me more wattage and more lumens total per sq. ft but the reflectors would have greater coverage. So I figure the 4 600's wouldn't be a bad option. I could just run a single 3' T5 light down the center to fill in some lighting. I drew up a 3D model of my grow space and DWC buckets with the 2 different light choices and the red showing their light coverage.

I'm just trying to see if my grow space will be worth it or not, in the model the grow space extends to the right to make it a "L" shape but that right side is a 1'+ shorter in height with about the same length and width as the portion of the model I did draw.

I will be growing my plants short using the manifolding technique trying to keep them short and bushy and lots of colas. Please let me know if anyone has any thoughts/opinions! Thanks :volcano-smiley:

Untitled176.jpg
What kind of budget

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Re: Grow light comparasion

I'm still new to all this so I never knew about them haha. Looking at them now I'm just concerned about heat and having such a short grow space
 
Re: Grow light comparasion

I didn't realize your growspace was only 5' tall. One thing to consider, just because they're LED's doesn't mean they don't produce heat. Each Reflector-144 is producing 700 BTU's, or around 1400 BTU's. I don't know what the Mars-600 produce, because they're no longer listed on the Mars website. With an actual wattage draw of 278w, though, it's higher than the Mars II-400 which only draws 177W and produces around 600BTU. 4 of those are producing 2400BTU's of total heat energy. That sounds like a lot.

This thread might be of interest to you: Bulb heat - Watts to Btu to Celsius Calculation

Take some of those numbers, plus what Mars Hydro says about their lights, and you can probably find people with grow areas comparable to yours to find out what kinds of lights (and heat) they are producing and how much ventilation they need to maintain temperature.

My grow space is even smaller than yours. 4' x 3' x 2'
I really wanted to run LEC 315, but I just don't think I can maintain temperature in that size space. Maybe if I move up to a tent or larger grow area (or extend my cabinet vertically with a "sunroof" lol), I'll upgrade, or if I'm ready to make an air cooled CMH, I'll try that. But I'm only growing for 1 person who smokes maybe an ounce a month, so massive yields are not as important right now.
 
Re: Grow light comparasion

A 315 watt lec puts out about 1074 btu hr...... I use one ss315 watt lec per plant.... I depend on a high yield, with only a few plants... Bottom line is that i'm just too lazy to take care of a lot of plants.... As it is i'm with my girls 2 times a day, for a total of about 15-20 minutes....
The girls, aside from starving the last couple weeks, only have one really bad day... Using 2 waterfarms, two ss315 watt lecs, i got a total of 26oz off of two plants last time around... There's also a coco/perlite in the same room, under a 430 watt hps for comparison..... stop by...
 
Re: Grow light comparasion

I didn't realize your growspace was only 5' tall. One thing to consider, just because they're LED's doesn't mean they don't produce heat. Each Reflector-144 is producing 700 BTU's, or around 1400 BTU's. I don't know what the Mars-600 produce, because they're no longer listed on the Mars website. With an actual wattage draw of 278w, though, it's higher than the Mars II-400 which only draws 177W and produces around 600BTU. 4 of those are producing 2400BTU's of total heat energy. That sounds like a lot.

This thread might be of interest to you: Bulb heat - Watts to Btu to Celsius Calculation

Take some of those numbers, plus what Mars Hydro says about their lights, and you can probably find people with grow areas comparable to yours to find out what kinds of lights (and heat) they are producing and how much ventilation they need to maintain temperature.

My grow space is even smaller than yours. 4' x 3' x 2'
I really wanted to run LEC 315, but I just don't think I can maintain temperature in that size space. Maybe if I move up to a tent or larger grow area (or extend my cabinet vertically with a "sunroof" lol), I'll upgrade, or if I'm ready to make an air cooled CMH, I'll try that. But I'm only growing for 1 person who smokes maybe an ounce a month, so massive yields are not as important right now.

I knew they still produced heat I was more concerned about the heat directed towards the plants affecting how far they had to be from the plants. I didn't even get to looking into heat produced yet haha great point though, that is a shit ton on heat.This just brings more to think about.

Same here with my setup though it's just for me and I'm just trying to get the best setup on my budget, for 4 plants. What lights do you currently use? I was thinking of the LEC 315 as well.


Get the reflector series but get 4 or more light to fight square inverse law

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Yea I just see that 4 mars 600's brings me the perfect wattage and lumens and light coverage for the price. The only draw back is the heat they produce. Everything else is exactly the power level I want (according to the specifications they list)
 
Currently, I have 8x42W CFL's. I realized that those are pumping out about 1200BTU's of thermal energy, which is why I'm having some serious heat problems. In hindsight, I could have picked up a cheap LED or even a 250W HID for the amount of money I spent on CFL's. At least I can save those for my garage and house lighting. :laughtwo:


Since my grow area only has a 2 x 1.5' footprint where I put my plants (I'm running ebb/flow table in a 26" x 20" tray), I decided to just pick up a Reflector-96 to finish off this grow. UPS tells me it's arriving Tuesday.
A Mars-600 would have been cheaper, and definitely sufficient, but I think the Reflector-96 will be more useful to me in the long run. I've heard the 5W LED's it uses also have better canopy penetration than the 3W's in the Mars-600.

I'm still seriously considering cutting a hole in the roof of my cabinet (aka, a sunroof/skylight :laughtwo:) sealing it with some lexan/plexiglass and putting the reflector on top of that. I think that's the only way to keep the vertical distance necessary to keep from bleaching the tops of my plants when they grow up. All the ballast will be outside the cabinet and I can just aircool it from there. I just need to make sure it's not a fire hazard, setting the reflector on wood.

My next grow won't be until September at the earliest, so I probably have until mid-November to figure out what I'm going to do with flowering, when light becomes most important.
 
Currently, I have 8x42W CFL's. I realized that those are pumping out about 1200BTU's of thermal energy, which is why I'm having some serious heat problems. In hindsight, I could have picked up a cheap LED or even a 250W HID for the amount of money I spent on CFL's. At least I can save those for my garage and house lighting. :laughtwo:


Since my grow area only has a 2 x 1.5' footprint where I put my plants (I'm running ebb/flow table in a 26" x 20" tray), I decided to just pick up a Reflector-96 to finish off this grow. UPS tells me it's arriving Tuesday.
A Mars-600 would have been cheaper, and definitely sufficient, but I think the Reflector-96 will be more useful to me in the long run. I've heard the 5W LED's it uses also have better canopy penetration than the 3W's in the Mars-600.

I'm still seriously considering cutting a hole in the roof of my cabinet (aka, a sunroof/skylight :laughtwo:) sealing it with some lexan/plexiglass and putting the reflector on top of that. I think that's the only way to keep the vertical distance necessary to keep from bleaching the tops of my plants when they grow up. All the ballast will be outside the cabinet and I can just aircool it from there. I just need to make sure it's not a fire hazard, setting the reflector on wood.

My next grow won't be until September at the earliest, so I probably have until mid-November to figure out what I'm going to do with flowering, when light becomes most important.
The mars isn't really intense enough in my opinion I've had many plants grow rite into my mars2 400w

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Now my lights now are way to intense n it would burn from intensity n heat coming off them but at least it doesn't make my room hot but I have an amare solar eclipse 450uvb it's like the sun inside but it's pricey but we'll worth every dime n it covers my 4x4 very well

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I recommend you go with Reflector 144,2 Reflector coverage is 4'x4'.Reflector series light has switches, you can control spectrum settings between growth and flower mode.Reflector series with better built-up.:high-five:
Reflector series
 
I'm glad to hear that your girls had a great time with the light:thanks:
Hey bud, I'm currently running 2X Mars Reflector 192's in my 4'x4'x8' tent. I left my 600 watt Ushio HPS in there. I'm actually amazed by the results. Mars is a great company.
 
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