Mars Hydro SP250 Test Grow

I have always been critical of any Mars Hydro and their “blurple” lights, as well as any company really selling these lights and labeling them full spectrum, so when I seen they had new lights made from epistar’s SMD diodes, I just had to try it myself and see If this light compares at all to a Quantum Board setup, which I use in my main tent. I picked up a 4x2 tent from them as well, I think the combo was about $400. Everything arrived and is all assembled, just waiting for some new Rapid Rooters to arrive and I will be popping in 2 of Useful Seeds’ Orange Cookies x Chocolate Diesel fems. Once the seeds are in the plugs, I will start updatin regularly with progress, so anyone that has been curious about this light, feel free to follow my journey! Attached are some shots of the tent assembled!’

 

Just an update, everything is ready to grow, going to pop the seeds into rapid rooters tomorrow! Will update as progress is made!

 

I’ve been critical of them and other blurple manufacturers for selling blurples and labeling them full spectrum, so when I seen true full spec LEDs pop up on amazon, I had to try it. This won’t replace my light, but depending on how well it performs, it very well may see a permanent home in either my veg tent or I may even keep this tent going and use it as something to play around with new soils/nutrients without having to worry about the quality of my medicine.

 

Seeds are now germinating!


I mixed up 1/8 tsp of recharge into a gallon of RO water and let a couple rapid rooters soak in it for a while. I put the seeds into the plugs and removed a little bit of the bottom of the plug to cover the hole at the top. I filled the bottom part of the tray with 1/4” of water and filled each cell in the top part of the tray with 1/2” of perlite to wick up the water. Now we just play the waiting game until we see some roots and its on to the next step!

 

That’s what I’m hoping for, I have a lot of people in our local MMJ subreddit who come to me for advice on their set up, and when it comes to lighting, for whatever reason they always ignore me and get burple lights. My guess is that they don’t want to order off of Alibaba and can’t afford to order directly from HLG, so they go with whatever is rated well on Amazon. If this light works well, It will definitely be something I recommend to people who aren’t comfortable ordering from Kingbrite. Super fast shipping too, I had it in like 2 days.

 

These ladies have popped up to say hello! Dug a little hole in two 1 gals of coco/perlite, sprinkled some recharge power in to help the ol roots, planted them into the hole and gave them a little water. Time to let these ladies do their thing!

 

I agree, it’s nice to see them move away from the purple lights. I don’t expect this light to be better than the QBs I’ve got in my other tents, but I am very active in my local MMJ subreddit, and a lot of the people I talk to on there, aren’t very internet savvy, are are very wearing about ordering from Alibaba, so as long as these perform the way I’m expecting, it would be a good light for people like that, as they’re usually comfortable ordering from Amazon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

They are basically the same as the QBs, they even use meanwell drivers, but they use epistar diodes instead of Samsung. I wish I had one of the older QBs with Samsung lm561c diodes in it to compare to, I imagine that would be a much closer comparison than to the lm301B or lm301H boards I have right now.

They put out a little bit of heat, but I imagine that taking the driver off the light will mitigate a decent amount of that. I have the temperature at 71 in my house, in the tent it’s 78 while the lights are running.

Also, I just paid Kingbrite right around $400 for a new 480w QB with the newest Samsung diodes plus 660nm Cree xpe2 diodes. A friend of mine ordered a 240w the other day and paid just over $200.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, the 7 degrees is with a 6” fan blowing on the driver. I’m going to remove the driver from the light whenever it gets closer to flower, but for now it works just fine.

you’ve got to message Kingbrite directly through alibaba and bargain with them a bit. I think they list it at like $190 with the newest diodes and 660nm xpe2 plus LG UV, and he talked them down to $170 without the UV, and then it was $45-50 for the shipping.

 

yeah, except I always order them preassembled. I would trust a Kingbrite light more than I would a Mars light. Not that I’ve ever had safety issues with Mars lights myself, but everything I’ve ever gotten from Kingbrite has been top notch.

the Mars driver is also detachable however, if that’s what you’re comparing it to.

 

Sorry its been a while without an update. We’re in the not so exciting stage of growth right now, where they are spending a good portion of their energy establishing their root zones. They do seem to be doing well so far, Have been feeding a light mixture of 1ml/gal Dynagro Foliage-Pro, now that we are at a week since sprouting, I am going to start slowly increasing Foliage-Pro strength, and add in some ProTekt. I have also been treating with recharge every other day by filling up 8oz of water and mixing it with 1/8tsp of recharge, and than pouring 4oz of recharge water directly over the stalk of the plants. I will continue to do this as well, except as the plants get bigger, I will up the dosage a bit as well as the volume of the mix.

Notes about the light: It seems to be doing pretty well in terms of delivering energy to the plants. The one issue I have had so far is the heat the light puts off. I have the driver outside of the tent, and my tent is in a room that stays at 70-71 degrees Fahrenheit, and even with the driver outside of the tent and a fan blowing air over the light itself, it still heats my tent up to 78/79 degrees. Not a big concern really, my leaf surface temps are still only about 76, but I am going to have to brainstorm ways to get the temp down a little bit during flower, as I like to be a little closer to 70 during flower stage. Not nearly as much heat as an HPS would put off, however its a decent amount more than my Quantum Boards I’m comparing this to. With the driver outside of the tent on my quantum board, the temperature increase is very small. I do wonder however, If this doesnt have something to do with the tent the light is in. The only other tents I’ve ever used (not counting homemade setups) have been the heavy duty version of the Gorilla Grow tents, and these are very well insulated. I have the driver for this light, sitting on the window sill about a foot behind the tent. I might try moving the tent further from where I have the driver sets, to see if that makes a difference.