Led Users Unite!

thanks for that serapis
thats the sort of answers i was looking for(reassuring), i think a lot of people have doubts because a lot of people are saying lots of negative things and they have never done or seen a ufo grow. information from people who have done these sorts of grows is invaluable for people who are looking for just the facts. i am no expert and havnt finished my grow yet but its but i think that i have already learned a great deal about growing and will only learn more as you did, as my grow progresses. then i will be in a position to give first hand knowledge to anyone that wants to know something about this growing light.
when using the ufo did you find it was better to have it close to the plant and if not what distance did you find it the best to keep the ufo at?
thanks
lu

luciferateme said:

hi ok computer
those plants of yours look to be coming on fine, i can let you know what yield i get from my plants because i should be finished before you. hopefully it wont be too bad but it wont be as much as growing with hps i dont think, but not too far behind. if i was you i would be very pleased with how they are coming along. its funny how you mention the branching because the grow i have the plants started to branch a good bit and they were already a week in flower.
if you want to keep an eye on my grow or get updates i will be posting more updates in the irish growers thread.
good luck with your grow and i hope you are happy with your yield in the end. i personally could not use hps as the space i have the heat build up would have been too much and i would not have been to fix enough ventelation in place to keep cool, i am only using a small computer fan now and its doing a great job.
lu

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Thanks for the reply lucifer,

I had issues with heat too, I'm using a growlab inside of my closet so HID just isn't practical. Aside from the branching, the plants just are staying much shorter with the lumigrow than they did with HID's. That doesn't mean they're not growing though, it just seems all the growth is being channelled into building more and more new branches. One benefit I've noticed is I use far less water than I would with HID lighting. I'd say almost half as much. I will definitely be checking in on your grow, I'm still getting the hang of growing with LED's am very interested in what other users are doing with them. I can definitely recommend supplementing with T-5's, it complements LED's very well. I personally use blue spectrum bulbs because the lumigrow unit I have has far more red than blue. I also read in a book that blue spectrum during vegetative growth encourages more females. To all the haters out there; if you couldn't grow with LED's you were doing something wrong, or you bought a bad light from an unreputable source. If you get a good unit from a good company, you will not have a problem growing. A lot of what I see is people trying to grow large numbers of plants with 90W UFO's. of course you won't get good results that way, despite manufacturer claims. You either need multiple units or higher wattage panels like the 300 and 600W models. Anyway, thats just my 2cents

hi ok computer
well said fella, i think people who have constraints like us can definetly find a need for ufos but as you say only small grows, personal use grows!. when i first started my grows i only had normal cfl`s but next time i think i will add a red cfl spectrum because i think my ufo is an allrounder and not so many red leds like yours for flowering. so really depending on what ever ufo you have you supplement with either the red or blue cfls, its a real learning experience though and theres a few changes i will make on my next grow. now my plants are in flower they are drinking lots of water, like half a litre a day! i think thats a lot and they are really srating to bud out aswell but during the veg stage they hardly drunk any, i thought the growth was stunted so i flushed them and they seemed to come on for that. i will keeep an eye on your grow also computer so good luck with it and i hope you have lots of nice smokeable weed in the end.
lu

lucifer,

One of the most important lessons I learned from LED's, is they can burn plants. I started out with my unit almost touching the plants, and they started shriveling up soon after. Once I backed it about 8-12 inches away, the problem disappeared. So even though they don't produce enough heat to burn plants, too much light can also be a bad thing I guess.

you could also end up "bleaching" the buds if they are to close to the LED....

stoneyluv said:

you could also end up "bleaching" the buds if they are to close to the LED....
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Exactly. Thats one of the things they don't tell you though. But light is light, even if it looks like its not going to harm your plants, you still need to watch out for signs of burning and bleaching. I found the best distance from the plants to be 10 inches, at least for my unit.

SWUSAZ said:

chimming in with question i recently purchased a gotham hydro 240 watt blackstar panel this is pretty intense to say the least as it runs 3watt cree's. My question is distance from tops they say 14-18" so how can you tell if you are actually to close while using these units?

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anywhere between 8" and 15" will be fine.

get them as close as you can while still covering your whole plant, yet minimum of 10 or so with the 3w bulbs.

SW,

The best way to tell if the light is too close is just by watching the plants. If its too close they'll start to burn just like with an HID. My plants started shriveling and turning yellow. After I moved the light i haven't had anymore issues

I was at 14 and they were burning so brought it up.

SWUSAZ said:

OK THANK'S FOLK'S I JUST TURNED THE PANEL ON THIS MORNING AND TURNED OFF THE CFL'S TO SEE IF I CAN TELL A DIFFERANCE IN GROWTH RATES THE CFL'S WERE PRODUCING (TWO SETS OF LEAVES A DAY SEEMS AVERAGE)AS I HAVE BEEN USING 65k CFL'S AND I AM PLANNING A SOG NOT SURE MASTER KUSH TWO UP AROUND 3 INCHES ALREADY FIM COMPLETE ON BOTH AND CRAZY FORMATIONS ARE SO THICK I HAVE ALREADY LST'E THEM. I PLAN ON VEGING FOR QUITE SOME TIME SINCE I AM IN VERY TIGHT SPACE ONLY 26 X 29 X 29h. THE GROW IS IN A ROUGHNECK CLEAR TUB NEW AT WALLY-WORLD. I SPRAYED THE OUTSIDE BLACK AND SPRAY FOAMED THE TUB, RUNNING A 5 GALLON RES OUTSIDE THE GROW BOXES USING GH PRODUCTS. SINCE THIS IS MY FIRST GROW IN QUITE SOME TIME I THOUGHT I WOULD GO WITH THE LATEST LED TECH BULBS. I HAVE THREE CLOUD 9 FREEBEE'S ON ONE SIDE BUT NO SPROUTS. USUALLY ONLY ONE DAY IS NEEDED TO SPROUT MAYBE THE DINAFEM SECONDS WERE JUST ALL PLAIN BAD. SOME DAY IN THE FUTURE I WILL TRY AND POST A PICK OR TWO.

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SW,

Don't turn off your CFL's. Theres been a few studies that show fluorescent light is the perfect complement to LED's. I had just my LED for about a week while my T-5's were on backorder, and once I installed them I noticed the growth is just explosive.

Serapis said:

I'm not ignoring you.... I don't see every post made, sorry. Now if you were on my friends list and sent me a PM.....

LED lighting doesn't penetrate the way the sun or hid lamps do. If you look at my old thread, there was an excellent explanation of spectrums used by the plant and what LEDs provided and what they did not.

There is a grow going on now by G.O.D. in which he has powerful Kessil LED lamps and he is trying to train the plant in a scrog.... he is getting no stretching or branching and it is frustrating him.

Here is one pic of the plants as they are now....

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I think that my lack of stretching was mainly because the poor plant was suffering extreme cal/mag/phos lockout due to the very acidic waterings it was getting.
I have a couple of clones under the light now (12/12) and they are starting to stretch.

I just wonder if I did no more FIM's and let it reach for the big panel maybe by cutting the 24/7 a bit? This is my first grow in many years but it seems easy enough with all the true help posters there are in these forums. Once again as I become more familiar with this forum I will try and remember to take some Pic’s.
Thanks’ again

Serapis said:

Absolutely. My first grow was intended as a personal grow of 5 plants, under strict LED, as a test of the HTG lights. I've recently been struck by a small tragedy in my life and am in sudden need of cash. I now need to grow to pay some expenses and I switched over to HPS. LED and FL have many benefits used together, and I highly recommend them for closet grows where ventillation may be a problem, or where 600 watts may overload a circuit breaker.

The lights do produce, they do flower. I've seen one gram per watt achieved with nothing but a single LED UFO. For personal reasons, I have made a switch from LEDs, but having used them, can recommend them.

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I haven't heard or seen anything about your yield since your grow thread got locked up. Did you ever finish your LED only grow or did you change lighting prior to harvest? Did you ever harvest? What was your g/w yield? Do you have an all HPS grow going now? I need DETAILS, lol! I tried PM'ing you but your account has that dissabled for some reason it seems.

Sup Dudes.

Some of you know (Serapis being one) that I was doing a push with only x1 90W illuminator LED for x2 plants in a 1 Sq mtr Scrog. (Grow link in my sig) I think we can confirm that the LED at least works "well" for vegetation. I've recently started flowering and the plant that is left (Don't ask!!) is doing fine under the LED, but due to some stress factors that I may have stupidly injected into this grow I've decided to finish the grow with some good old 400W "supplemental" HiD lighting. I'm going to chime in and advise as to if I see a significant difference in the growth rate. I should also see a difference in the part of the plant directly under the LED as opposed to the rest which is exposed mainly to the HiD...


Pure...

Pure said:

Sup Dudes.

Some of you know (Serapis being one) that I was doing a push with only x1 90W illuminator LED for x2 plants in a 1 Sq mtr Scrog. (Grow link in my sig) I think we can confirm that the LED at least works "well" for vegetation. I've recently started flowering and the plant that is left (Don't ask!!) is doing fine under the LED, but due to some stress factors that I may have stupidly injected into this grow I've decided to finish the grow with some good old 400W "supplemental" HiD lighting. I'm going to chime in and advise as to if I see a significant difference in the growth rate. I should also see a difference in the part of the plant directly under the LED as opposed to the rest which is exposed mainly to the HiD...


Pure...

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I should think when you add 4.5x the wattage you will see improvement. I saw big improvement by adding CFL lighting equal to my LED light to my grow

Well here are a few Pic’s of my first grow setup using CFL's and a BlackStar 240 watt panel. Space is small 26W X 29D X 37H. Attic grow. Still fighting temps with the LED panel on highs up past 100d with the door closed working on increasing outflow cooling to a 6 inch vortex only have the 4 inch running now. MK ladies are 2wo weeks old vegged under 65K CFL's I have gone to straight LED to see diff's. I am trying to LST these to the best of my ability but growth is extremely dense I wish I could get some midget clones started instead of waiting on the Clound 9 Dinafem freebee's to germ. I may look at trying to get some clones off these whill they are so short. Burning seems to be under control lowered the feeding a bit as the LED was a major increase compared to the CFL power I was giving them even though I can supply the 10 CFL bulbs in any configuration I need.https://www.rollitup.org/blogs/294981-swusaz.html