First grow, RDWC hydroponic purple erkle. LED

I picked up my light on Ebay it's part of the "reflective series", which is one of the better ones IMO, which have the veg/flower option and they come in different sizes and watts. If you have the money the have the MARS 2 series where you can pick up a 900watt for under $400. Now I haven't tried this light yet, but it was the one I initially wanted If I was to afford it. Once I expand I'll probably get a couple of these if I don't hear anything bad about them, but they seem solid. They're for both veg/flower but does not have the power saver switch to cycle between them, My plan was to just pick up 2 cool / 1 warm flourescent lights for veg and a cheap hood all together for like $50-$75, you don't need top notch lighting for veg and 900watts is way overdoing it. I checked out the solar storms form california works and I like them, but they are sooooo expensive. The reason they're expensive is not because they use "better parts", which they might use over some lights but the cost increase comes from being "American Made". This doesn't mean American parts, they still use Chinese parts but hire American labor to assemble which costs more. I'm not knocking the company for doing that, because it is simple business, I'm sure these lights are really good but I'm all for making China super-country of the world and rule us all.
 
This is the website of the company I got my light from: http://www.topledgrowlight.com/
I just ordered it off ebay instead.

 

This one still is going strong after 9 days, motherfucker is bright as hell I need glasses going into the room. Considering the solar storm 440 is $1000 and I only paid $269 for mine I think it will be well worth the cost if it's not defective. You can get 2400watts for less than the price you get 440watts from the solarstorm. Also i'm just using California Lightworks as reference since they're reputable, but nowhere does it say they don't use Chinese parts. They say manufactured in America, which means the parts are put together here, by Americans but still come from China and are probably from the same factory as the LED's from the MARS series. I'm not knocking the company and if it works go for it, but I'll find out for sure if its worth it in about 3-4 months hopefully.

 

I like mine so far, and it's solid, I wanna say it weighs a good 10 lbs. Anyways I haven't used a solarstorm so I can't compare it fairly but my studying in business gave me a bitterness towards brands. It might be true that some people have gotten them DOA or defective more often than a solarstorm, but brands pay for more testing before they get out. As long as they have a good replacement policy I don't see the problem. Top LED gets nothing but props from me so far!

 

These roots really took off and are looking great!
 

I just added 50 ML of Cal/Mag to the reservoir today to help the plants out a little, until their next feeding, probably this weekend. The PH is still stable at 6.0 and I have 654ppm. I noticed under the LED the plants look like they're yellowing, but I took them outside and under sun or regular lighting they look healthy. I got these really cool sunglasses with a yellow lens (not sure what kind), that works really well at blocking out the LED's and showing the plants true color.

 

Alright guys, I  felt comfortable enough to start some training today. I topped both of the plants, and started some LST. Basically I just taped one of the top leaves to the side of the net pot exposing more nodes. And hopefully soon these side nodes can start to develop, into a big, bushy, happy plant.
 

 

its ideal to use bamboo shoots, but I had tape. Its also harder to use the shoots in hydroton so I just made it easy on my self. This accomplishes what I need to do cheap and easy, and no, a little bit of tape covering less than 1/4" of leaf is not gonna poison or hurt the plant. When im ready to bring it back up on its own, just simply cut the leaf

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Ok, so today I added a couple additions to my grow room. I was at the store so I picked up a 6" clip fan to try and get rid of the 16" fan I have in there, that's too big. It looks like I'm going to need 1 more though before I can take it out, but now at least with this fan I can have it blow directly on the plants. I also was digging around and I found 2 hoods for CFL's that I used to use in construction. I had 2 60 watt CFL's hanging around, and decided to throw them in the room and add a little UMPH! I clipped the leaf tips off that were taped down today and brought that plant back up. Boy oh boy did it pay off, after just 2 days there's lots of new growth. I'm not going to do anymore training till after my res change, which will probably be this Sunday.
 
Here's some picks of how the plants are doing now. This one is definitely the strongest one of the 2.

This one has been going a little slower but still getting new growth.

The "strongest" plant is on the right.

And here's a pic of the "new" set up.

 

Ya I dropped them down another foot after I took that picture. The tops of the plants are 26" from the my LED, and about 6" from my CFL.

 

Ya I think LED is nice for personal grows because it works better in tight spaces and runs cooler, but when I expand to a larger scale grow I am going to switch to HPS. I know it definitely won't hurt throwing in a couple LED's with the HPS if you have the money and the space. I'm running 2 purple erkle clones i picked up from the dispensary.