My LEDs are killing my plants!

[Terp]

For your amusement, this link gives some info on a couple blurple lights... DIAMOND SERIES 200 WATT VS MARS II 400 WATT....

Thank you Dr. Fish

Those numbers are very terrible and tons of spectrum is missing.

Im throwing down over 1000 umols evenly no matter where you place the sensor @ around 18". (even on the edges)

Here is a friends grow that is only using 6 cxb cobs

Ill grab some pics of my crop next time. I just pulled a little over 12 zips of Gorilla Glue #4 from my 2x4 tent. I bet I hit a pound in my little tent with my Chem 4.

 

[Terp]

Here are my first 2 builds with the white balance adjusted. The left tent is 10x cxb3070 3000k at 1.05 A. The right tent is 8x cxb3590 at 1.4 A. Both over 1200 PPFD and about 52% efficient. My third one is the best so far but I dont have pics of it yet. Forth 3500K build is in the works right now. All dimmable.

 

[Dr Fish]

My grow with the led was mostly out of curiosity... That's only a 18"x 24" scrog... Was running Waterfarms with 1 600hps, one plant, one light per waterfarm...... dropped down to 400hps, now downsizing to ss315cmh....3'x3' scrog... They seem to be the newest hid trend... Hope they meet my expectations.... https://www.420magazine.com/gallery/data/759/Fullscreen_capture_09082015_090911.jpg

 

[GoldenEagle]

Thank you Dr. Fish

Those numbers are very terrible and tons of spectrum is missing.

Do you realize the missing spectrum is missing on purpose, because the plant uses only parts of the overall light spectrum for growing and photosynthesis?
Can your CREE LED array put out the infrared spectrum plus the UltraViolet B light wavelengths? If not, your arrays are missing part of the light spectrum the plants use for growth and photosynthesis. Most LED arrays can't put out UVB and some LED arrays have added Infrared light.

 

[Terp]

Do you realize the missing spectrum is missing on purpose, because the plant uses only parts of the overall light spectrum for growing and photosynthesis?
Can your CREE LED array put out the infrared spectrum plus the UltraViolet B light wavelengths? If not, your arrays are missing part of the light spectrum the plants use for growth and photosynthesis. Most LED arrays can't put out UVB and some LED arrays have added Infrared light.

Sounds like your getting your spectrum education from LED sales sites. The blues and reds they always point out is just the peaks of chlorophyll A and B. Does the sun look blurple to you? The plants use most of a full spectrum. Less in the green areas thou.

I have experimented with UVB with little to no benefits. Was not worth rigging the extra lights up.

How efficient do you think the mono chips are? I will tell you. Horrible. Very Horrible, with the exception to the blue chips. And Im pretty sure they dont even use the best blue leds. ( and cree dont make the best blue chip by the way )

The White Cree COBs put out more red and blue than these burple lights do by far. They completely dominate blurple lights in PAR light output and you can put them together at a very high efficiency. . High end LED companies are moving to them.

Your better off with a roughly 36% PAR efficient HPS than a blurple light.

Ask any blurple light company what the PPFD is for their recommended footprint and watch them dance around the question because the answer is stupid low. Plus almost all of these companies dont even spread their chips out for even canopy coverage.

Ask me about my cob builds and Ill tell you about 1200 - 1300 at 50 watts a square ft.

 

[LEDBud]

Lol

 

[Graytail]

Don't forget, though, at the end of the day, it's also about dollars/umol. HID rules, in that department.

The newest white COBs are clearly more power-efficient than either HID or blurple LED, but even DIY, they're over $1.5/watt. Good blurples run under $1/watt, so you end up with more umols/dollar.

If you're in an area with extremely high electricity cost, or you simply can't tolerate much heat, then white COBs are a no-brainer. Otherwise, mainstream LED tech will cost less ... for now. I'm sure COB costs will come down. Roughly, what is the cost/watt of a manufactured white COB panel? MUCH higher than $1.5/watt.

I'm running 1000 watts of blurples in a 4x4 and getting about 1000 umols at 2 feet across the entire canopy. That would cost me ... $1200 for COBs? And I'd have to build them myself. This setup cost about $1000 and they came prebuilt.

BUT ... my next upgrade will probably be 4 cxb3590s for the gaps at the sidewalls - I've been watching and sourcing parts since someone gave me the headsup about the Crees.

 

[GoldenEagle]

Sounds like your getting your spectrum education from LED sales sites. The blues and reds they always point out is just the peaks of chlorophyll A and B. Does the sun look blurple to you? The plants use most of a full spectrum. Less in the green areas thou.

I have experimented with UVB with little to no benefits. Was not worth rigging the extra lights up.

How efficient do you think the mono chips are? I will tell you. Horrible. Very Horrible, with the exception to the blue chips. And Im pretty sure they dont even use the best blue leds. ( and cree dont make the best blue chip by the way )

The White Cree COBs put out more red and blue than these burple lights do by far. They completely dominate blurple lights in PAR light output and you can put them together at a very high efficiency. . High end LED companies are moving to them.

Your better off with a roughly 36% PAR efficient HPS than a blurple light.

Ask any blurple light company what the PPFD is for their recommended footprint and watch them dance around the question because the answer is stupid low. Plus almost all of these companies dont even spread their chips out for even canopy coverage.

Ask me about my cob builds and Ill tell you about 1200 - 1300 at 50 watts a square ft.

No, my LED education didn't come from the companies. I don't care about the color the light emitting diodes put out.

The peaks is where the plant has the most response to light. Being certain the LED array covers the peaks make sense.

If you really want to do better than any LED array out there, grow outdoors or use a LEP (light emitting plasma) system.

 

[Graytail]

I did some more research, and white COBs are running closer to $2-3 per watt, and that's still DIY.

I like 'em, but they're just damned pricey right now.

 

[Terp]

I did some more research, and white COBs are running closer to $2-3 per watt, and that's still DIY.

I like 'em, but they're just damned pricey right now.

Thats true. They are spendy to buy but, you can get great deals on chips getting them from Kingbrite and getting them shipped from china.
Instead of looking at watts/dollar. Its better to look at the umols per watt. You will find that your getting more PAR on your plants per dollar. Thats makes them the better deal.

 

[Graytail]

You will find that your getting more PAR on your plants per dollar. Thats makes them the better deal.

No, actually, you're not, and it isn't. Not at that cost/watt. It'll get there, though.

I'm on your side - I like 'em. I just wish they weren't so spendy. Have you checked out what Par-Force is doing with milliwatt chips? They use hundreds of high-efficiency .25 watt leds with phosphor coatings to broaden the spectrum - very interesting tech, and they just dropped the prices to $2-3 a watt.

 

[Terp]

I was checking them out. Looks like the 500 covers a 3x3 area ok. Much better than some that I cant mention. From the video Im seeing on the numbers, they are about 8 inches away. The PAR grids they had still showed all the same prob most commercial ones do. Too much in the middle and not enough on the outer edges. So it being only good for a 3x3, Thats 56 watts per Ft²

Id like to know how they Gain efficiency by adding a Phosphor coating? (Thats the reason the 2700K cobs dont have that great of efficiency)

My lights personally may not be beating the cost for PAR but thats because I run more of them softer to get a very high efficiency and dont use smaller cpu heatsinks for active cooling only.

Here is a light you can throw together for around the same price as the PF500 that puts out a bunch more PAR for the buck:

PF500 = 675 PPFD on a 4x4 Area (so they say but wont release any data on thier "special chips") All I see is a video of them holding the PAR meter at around 8" and you never see the meter numbers. S0 I dont trust thier numbers claimed. Transparency on thier part would give me much more trust in them.

9x Vero29 4k Driven at 2.1A 3 rows of 3 cobs for a good even coverage.

708 (dissipation W) * .4077 (COB efficiency at the Current) = 289 PAR W
289 PAR W/16 ft² = 18.05 PAR W/ft²
18 * 10.7 (ft² in 1 m²) = 193 PAR W/m²
193 * 4.62 (umol/PAR W for CXA 3000K) = 892 PPFD on a 4x4 Area or 1585 PPFD for a 3x3
Thats about .71 bucks a watt and



BML spyder600 was tested by a NIST lab as part of a university study, conducted under one of the most well known plant scientist in recent decades. And recorded at 1.7µmol/j...26% more than the PF500...or you can look at it like a glass half full...PF500 puts out 21% less.
Study linked below....with many more current, and outdated lights, that are and have been producing 1.4+µmols/w for a while. Top performing lights from any technology are currently hitting 1.7-2.0+µmols/w...and still pumping 750-1000+w onto a 1.5m2 canopy.

PLOS ONE: Economic Analysis of Greenhouse Lighting: Light Emitting Diodes vs. High Intensity Discharge Fixtures

 

[Terp]

Here is a light you can throw together for around the same price as the PF500 that puts out a bunch more PAR for the buck:

I made a mistake. I thought the PF500 was around 500 bucks. That was the 240 watt at that price.
The only 500 I could find online was 1995$ The makers site does not have them either

 

[Graytail]

I made a mistake. I thought the PF500 was around 500 bucks. That was the 240 watt at that price.
The only 500 I could find online was 1995$ The makers site does not have them either

Yeah, the 240 is the one I have. It was originally $1250 (I didn't pay that ...). At $2/watt it's a great panel, though - I love it - great tech, very very low heat, very high efficiency. I think I saw 1.35 umols/watt? Versus 0.7-0.8 for HID? It's on the site.

I have a ton of blurples but I prefer a full spectrum for a lot of reasons. I got this Par-Force panel for winning POTY, and I'm really pleased with it. The blue LEDs they use are super efficient, and they add a phosphor blend to broaden the spectrum. Phosphors are a transfer process - it doesn't consume wavelengths the way filters do - the phosphors themselves glow in the other color bands.

But here we are junking up some guys thread. Did we ever solve his issue? Something about LEDs burning his plants?

 

[Terp]

I dont mind. I ended up getting rid of the lights without figuring them out. Plus the mods deleted half my post here on this thread.
Learned a lot about LEDs since.

Well I hope your lights serve you well.

 

[Graytail]

Ack, posting with a fresh buzz can make a guy stupid. You're the original poster.

And I never congratulated you on the very nice rig you built! +reps

 

[JPHerbalist]

This is my first post ever in any weed forum - The reason of my post I bought alot of the 192 mars hydro panels and as soon as they got here I changed them with 250W mother bulb light that I had on one side and 4 florecent tubes I had on the other side - Under the 250W where growing much faster, but any way I change all this lights and put on 2 panels of the 192 mars leds bla bla bla They where about 16 days old plants and I notice the next day some had got burnt they where 45cm(24") high from the plants - So my first instinct was to raise the lights witch I did to about 75cm(30") and now they look a bit less stress but still I have seem some of the leafs a bit crispy some of the leafs bent and some of the leafs yellowish around the center of the leafs - but personally since I raised the lights i think they are slowly addapting to the change of lights and that the burnt and yellowish was just at the begging being at 24" and the bent leafs because of Voodoo Juice or abit of mix of both - At the end of the day I have been growing for 10 years I have supperb skills outdoor and Im a qualified Herbologist, what I can say is this tecnology is still new so what ever you do with plants introduce, what ever your introducing, very slow and try it out on 1 or 2 individual plants that way you dont fuck up your entire grow and I hope that Mrs Hydro Team give out more info to new clients about switching your grow on with the reflector model to start of with at least 1 week/10 days at 30" high once the plant has addapted to the change then lower them slowly with time.

~JPHERBALIST

 

[Alien88]

What a sad little man and so angry, its a shame he has a video camera.
He obviously excels at ranting but does not know how to ask for help.

Why does he not raise the little plant onto a stand ? its a clear example of his incompetence.
Quote from video "I wish my plant was closer to the light" ( he wishes)

He seems to know little but talk lots.

Seriously though

 

[roboquaid]

Did anyone ever find out what happened?? I'm having the same issues

 

[Phytoplankton]

Don’t know the original post is 6 years old. Your issue is a water/root and light issue. What’s your grow media? Seems small to support enough roots for the plant, nutes?. Also, “leggy”, what’s your light source?