In defense of blurple lights

Pinktiger777

Well-Known Member
Light snobs among us, don't knock the "blurple" lights. They are effective and cost less to purchase and run than HID or similar lighting. When I decided to grow cannabis, I researched for months and months. I knew I wanted to grow as fast as possible, so I chose hydroponics. I went with ebb and flow because it was something I knew I could understand and oversee. The lights were another matter. I bought a Viparspectra full spectrum 300 watt equivalent for my first grows. The grows were nice, but I wasn't getting much out of the harvest, just four ounces or so. So I added a light, the same light. 600 watts equivalent was doing the job better, and I was getting an extra ounce or two. When I decided to add the second tent for cloning, I bought a dimmable light, also Viparspectra, 300 watt equiv. I liked it so much I bought another one for the big tent, and now I have 900 watts equivalent over my canopy in the grow tent.
The last yield with four plants in the tent was a bit over 9 ounces of bud. I also had about a pound of trim. Sugar trim.
Now I'm growing three Mazari Grape plants in the flowering tent, and they were just flipped to 12/12. Three because four was too many. I had one plant that was sickly because of crowding. Now all three are doing well.
I don't do everything right. I have made a lot of mistakes, but because I'm willing to take chances and experiment, I have learned a great deal about growing cannabis using hydro (ebb and flow) and DWC (for cloning.)
And I feel I have enough light in my flowering tent to grow as much as possible in the small 2X2.5 feet X 57inches tall tent.
Why is blurple or LED given such a bad rap? I really want to know.
 
I read a big post about the difference between the lights that give off a purple light and the ones that give off a pink light. of course the 2 can look similar, but i wouldn't even call most Vipar stuff blurple as a lot of good quality led lights give off the pink. i've also done well with leds, but of course i gravitated to cob lights.

now i have 3x 2k watt ( about 400-450 from the wall ) cob leds in my 8x4 flower tent. they still give off a pink light when i turn on both switches.
 
Well I know picture that are taken in blurple lighting are terrible!!

The lights themselves are fine aren't they? :)

they're a great starting point for a new grower for sure. you won't find anyone that keeps growing and actually stays with a purple led set up. but the future is most definitely led tech. it might take a few more years for them to get it down, but 10 years from now, maybe even 5, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone growing with an old school dino light. too hot, too expensive to run, the maintenance not to mention the cops can use their radios to locate grows because they give off some kind of interference.

legal or not, it's not the kind of attention i'd like to have. so that's a no to the lights of yesterday on that point alone.
 
The only time I see them get a negative response is when new people ask for help and all you can see are blurple leaves. It happens just about every day and so I think that's why some people might give off the vibe that they don't like them. Can't see what the health of the plant really is under them and therefor natural lighting is needed to identify most issues.
I've seen great buds come from them...
 
Yeah I don’t mind one way or another what lights people use. The blurple colour pics are pretty painful to the eyes for me though.
When people get snobby and start calling your lights crap it’s always offensive. Things have lightened up (so to speak) quite a bit in recent times but I’ve read so many people over the years saying that HPS lighting is completely gone the way of the dinosaurs. So not true. Having put in a couple Q boards I realize even more that my HPS lights are doing an awesome job and the differences between the lighting types don’t seem nearly as dramatic as some people make them out to be.
 
I agree with you weasel! I dont comment on things unless I personally have used it. I will give my honest opinion (opinion the key word) n people can take that or leave it. I hope nobody thinks I'm bashing anything! Personally I have on hand now, 14 QBs, 2 blurple Mars from contest, a 630 cmh, 8 1000w hps. In my personal grow I'll be removing 6 QB from flower tent n replace my mh in veg with them. Put my 630 cmh in the bloom room. Then in commercial grow hps all the way in bloom n my 144s in veg.
Spent 15 years in same grow, had my montana kush for 12....she's my go to gal. Hps n cmh she is stanky n tastes amazing but under QBs she did put weight on but barely any taste n no smell. They just missing the right color in the spectrum, I think it blue n green they need. But they will do a good job!
 
I guess my only other sticking point with those types of LEDs is the false advertising of the wattage. It helps gives these lights a bad name IMO. Especially annoying when you bump into new growers who insist that their ‘2000 watt’ LED is actually 2000w or whatever and refuse to listen to anyone telling them differently. Government regulatory boards really dropped the ball with this one, allowing companies to blatantly lie to consumers. A watt is a watt. Not imaginary. Simple and easy to measure.
Try selling any other product that
contains only 1/4 of of the stated amount, and see heads roll.
 
Yeah sort of like when you go to a restaurant and pay for a full bottle of wine that’s only 1/4 full, and the waiter explains that actually it is full. Just that 3/4 of the bottle is only ‘potential’ wine?

‘Oh no sir. Yes sir. The potential 3/4 is actually really real. It’s there and all ready to go. You just need to add 3/4 of a bottle of wine to it, but we’ve provided the room for that in the bottle. Perhaps for your special needs you’d like to consider a 4 liter bottle sir? ‘

Hand me that fucking steak knife please honey...
 
I like my blurples. They have their place. CMH is better for veg and HP's is better for bloom but when you've got a twatty shaped attic that requires separate lights and height restrictions they can be pretty handy. As far as yield, I actually do better with the blurps than hid but the end product isn't as good.
 
Ok. I believe that my Viparspectra lights are sufficient. The buds are rock hard and the yield as large as any. And if the weed I grow were any stronger, I probably couldn’t handle it. But I also realize that one has to do ones’ own thing. And consider this: newbies are likely confused when putting a first inside grow together.
 
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