Heya, I am currently doing my very first grow & have bought a tent setup off eBay as well as sourced a DWC setup too. The set had came with 2x130w CFL lights (6400k & 2700k) as well as 2x 225 LED red & Blue panels Lumen(Red/Blue): Red - 7.2Lux x 165Bulbs + 4.5Lux x 60Bulbs I have also purchased 2x Viparspectra reflector series 300w LED Lights (yet to arrive) I wanted to take out the two LED panels that had came with it & use them for future seedlings etc & use the two Viparspectra’s along with the 130w CFL. Is this too much light to have & will the lights potentially burn? It’s a 1m x 1m x 2m tent (3.2 x 3.2 x 6.4) Also I wanted to know a good placement of the lights, ie what height & should they be either side of the CFL. I plan on having the 4x DWC plants & 2x potted plants. I’ll attach photos below. Any advice for the grow would be greatly appreciated, I can’t seem to find anything online to answer this question Thanks
I learned the hard way that LED lights may not be hot..but if you put them closer than 14 inches..you might get sever light burn (yellowing of fan leaves from inside out)...LED lights put out a lot of light..away more than cfl..my 4 by 2 grow table has 3 X 8 watt full spectrum (just 3600 k) and two tomatoe LED lights for the deeper flower cycle 550 - 720 nm spectrum..but most of the time I only use two lights for four plants. I keep my lights around 16 to 19 inches off canopy..my new table I made is height adjustable..and I use clamp on lights which gives me flexibility for clones and seedlings..your lights look kickass..but LED lights from homedepot work just as good as the expensive ones..I seem to be getting good solid potent buds..so I am happy. Look after your babies! Good luck!
Thanks for the response godboss! Since I’ve already ordered the Viparspectra LED’s I’m Going to hook them up & Leave them for a few days to try it out. I get what you’re saying about LED’s & I should have realised that. (I guess the switches from veg to bloom etc had gotten me Over the line). I’m just not sure wether the two 300w LED’s & the 130w CFL together will be too much light for the plants & cause damage or not Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
You are actually going to be under powered with your lights. Gen rule with blurple LEDs and HID lighting is 50 actual watts per sf. You have about 10 sf so 500 watts Or 350 watts of quantum board or cob LEDs. Your viparspectras only pull about 130 watts each and the cfls are only good for veg. Also 2 plants in DWC will fill that space
Thanks mate, I appreciate the help. Ohh right, so even though they are rated at 300w output I should work off the consumption of 130w? I had read online that each was rated to a 2ft x 2ft optimal radius- so I figured 2 of them would do a good job. So realistically, I need around about another 110w, is that right? I’ve already got the 4 of them in there & they seem to fit pretty well so far, so I’m going to try this & then worst case next grow reduce the amount in there. It’s all about trial and error, right? Cheers Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
No thise cfls won’t work much past 2-3 weeks. They’re low output veg lights. You’ll need a solid flower light. You could get 2-3 more of those viparspectras but they aren’t very good flower lights, too much blue, not enough red. IMO, you should get either a nice quantum board or cob setup for $500-600, or if you can handle the heat and electric bill as well as bulb changes etc, a cool tube 600 HPS would Flower really well for about $200
Yeah I burned a few nice plants before I realized light can be too intense for plants even if heat isn't an issue.