2x4 tent , light upgrade.

[joesoap2013]

That one is 45

 

[pegboy]

Grrrr…



My business owner + cannabis grower brain figures that they were getting call from growers who were damaging their plants + the cost of the 420 watt driver + very few people will actually use all of that light so they came out with a product that will still sell but will be cheaper to produce and growers who think that 100% at 12" hang height is a good idea won't be able to fry their plants. All of those are rational reasons but I got left with my d*ck in my ear.

The new light is a decent light and I like the spectrum more than the spectrum on the Mars 320 (300?) watt model but the V1 4500's, the one that you have, is the cat's meow.

Good point!! I've done 2 grows with mine so far and not sure if I've had it over 60% yet.

 

[joesoap2013]

Look at the drop off it the light spread on the spiderfarmer
It's cause it's 14 inch's wide
The middle has to be really high to bring outside its footprint up to decent levels

 

[Delps8]

Good point!! I've done 2 grows with mine so far and not sure if I've had it over 60% yet.

60% is about 900µmol at 10" which is good light but the icing on the cake is that you can raise that light about 8" or so, which will let your temps fall, and still get "lotsa light" on the canopy.

I've done half a dozen grow with the Growcraft and have had temps at 80-85. It was only this year that Westmoreland got sponsordhip for a wide audience about keeping temps way down in flower.

He did a YT video four years ago. It's interesting to watch because you can see he's a college "kid" who gets to do neat shit with cannabis. I watched it but he was talking about "hemp" so I didn't pay much heed.

My notes from that video are below. Check out the last paragraph. Yup, when opportunity knocked, I was out back, taking out the trash.

"

Does Hemp Need Extra Water and Fertilizer?
Mitch Westmoreland

Discusses temperature - Optimum temp to maximize CBD and yield and keep THC below 3%

Plants grown at 73 and 84 degrees. Plants at 84 were taller but colas were smaller in girth.

At 84 little but taller, a bit more vegetative biomass. Yield wasn't all that affected by the increase tempearature. At 84°, cannabanoids were roughly 1/2 of what they were at cooler temperatures.

Suggest that the optimum is between 70 and 80.

Fertilizer
You've probably come across hundreds of companies promising to boost yield. They "lack a theoretical basis" and you'll probably end up just throwing away money and excess nutrients that will end up polluting our nice rivers.

We recomend that you fertilize it just as you would tomatoes. This is a good comparison there's nothing particularly special about hemp.

One of the big claims that you'll see coming out out of the cannabis industry is that high phosphorus will increase yield and will increase cannabanoid content. We've tested this.

We look at a range of phosporus treatments ranging from borderline deficient to excessive. We found no significan difference, especially as we move toward the rates recommended by the cannabis industry. This has implications because phosporhus is a potent pollutant in our environment.

What we're trying to do is get growers to use as little P as we can while still getting a good crop.

Drought stress
In veg - they're very resiliant. Got to the point where they were severely wilted. They recovered so that it seems as if nothing happened. Hard to see which one's were stressed and while ones were well watered.

In flower - yellowing and dropping of leaves and reduction in yield. CBD and THC does not make production increase.

Temperature - yield increased slightly. CBD and THC plummeted - "cut in half basically". We don't have a good explanation for this right now. We're going to ssee if we can reproduce this and see if we can come up with an explanation for what's going on."


I finished testing a Mars SP3000R today which is, essentially, an LED clone of HPS but it the PPFD map is not suited to tent growing. Plus, it puts out a lot of heat so I'll be returning it. After a few days of research and analysis, and then testing the Mars light, I'm back to using my Growcraft. It's got more red in the spectrum than the 4500 but the PPFD map isn't as good. Somehow, I'll get by.

With that 4500 you've got, however, you'll be able to follow his advice to a T, so you've got a very rare light that will let you produce harvests that will be both high yield and high quality. Congrats.

 

[Delps8]

Look at the drop off it the light spread on the spiderfarmer
It's cause it's 14 inch's wide
The middle has to be really high to bring outside its footprint up to decent levels

I don't own the light but I've spent a few hours studying the G4500 and the SE4500, both the current version and the previous version.

The previous version was an excellent light with a 430 watt driver that put out the highest PPFD I've seen (with the exception of the Growcraft Ultra) with the best PPFD map on the market. For whatever reasons (and I suggested a few in a previous posting) Spider put out a new version of those lights with only a 320 watt driver. The result that they're producing "just another light" instead of "holy shit, that's a lot of light" light.

A second change was to standardize on one spectrum. The original G4500 had more blue in the spectrum and was more powerful than the SE 4500, by about 100µmol. The current lights still use Osram in the G and Samsung in the SE model but, by visual inspection of their marketing material, both lights have the same spectrum and that spectrum has less blue and more red. I prefer the new spectrum but would rather have had the PPFD if the G model.

That was then, this is now. The Spider 4500's have very good light output, excellent uniformity, and a very good spectrum. If I was in the market for a 2' x 4' light fixture, I'd go with the G4500.

 

[pegboy]

60% is about 900µmol at 10" which is good light but the icing on the cake is that you can raise that light about 8" or so, which will let your temps fall, and still get "lotsa light" on the canopy.

I've done half a dozen grow with the Growcraft and have had temps at 80-85. It was only this year that Westmoreland got sponsordhip for a wide audience about keeping temps way down in flower.

He did a YT video four years ago. It's interesting to watch because you can see he's a college "kid" who gets to do neat shit with cannabis. I watched it but he was talking about "hemp" so I didn't pay much heed.

My notes from that video are below. Check out the last paragraph. Yup, when opportunity knocked, I was out back, taking out the trash.

"

Does Hemp Need Extra Water and Fertilizer?
Mitch Westmoreland

Discusses temperature - Optimum temp to maximize CBD and yield and keep THC below 3%

Plants grown at 73 and 84 degrees. Plants at 84 were taller but colas were smaller in girth.

At 84 little but taller, a bit more vegetative biomass. Yield wasn't all that affected by the increase tempearature. At 84°, cannabanoids were roughly 1/2 of what they were at cooler temperatures.

Suggest that the optimum is between 70 and 80.

Fertilizer
You've probably come across hundreds of companies promising to boost yield. They "lack a theoretical basis" and you'll probably end up just throwing away money and excess nutrients that will end up polluting our nice rivers.

We recomend that you fertilize it just as you would tomatoes. This is a good comparison there's nothing particularly special about hemp.

One of the big claims that you'll see coming out out of the cannabis industry is that high phosphorus will increase yield and will increase cannabanoid content. We've tested this.

We look at a range of phosporus treatments ranging from borderline deficient to excessive. We found no significan difference, especially as we move toward the rates recommended by the cannabis industry. This has implications because phosporhus is a potent pollutant in our environment.

What we're trying to do is get growers to use as little P as we can while still getting a good crop.

Drought stress
In veg - they're very resiliant. Got to the point where they were severely wilted. They recovered so that it seems as if nothing happened. Hard to see which one's were stressed and while ones were well watered.

In flower - yellowing and dropping of leaves and reduction in yield. CBD and THC does not make production increase.

Temperature - yield increased slightly. CBD and THC plummeted - "cut in half basically". We don't have a good explanation for this right now. We're going to ssee if we can reproduce this and see if we can come up with an explanation for what's going on."


I finished testing a Mars SP3000R today which is, essentially, an LED clone of HPS but it the PPFD map is not suited to tent growing. Plus, it puts out a lot of heat so I'll be returning it. After a few days of research and analysis, and then testing the Mars light, I'm back to using my Growcraft. It's got more red in the spectrum than the 4500 but the PPFD map isn't as good. Somehow, I'll get by.

With that 4500 you've got, however, you'll be able to follow his advice to a T, so you've got a very rare light that will let you produce harvests that will be both high yield and high quality. Congrats.

Very intersting!!

 

[hairryhands2000]

I'm skeptical, by nature, but you're taking it to another level.

"Good post. I was v nervous about frying my plants and v gradually increased the power on my xs2500pro.
It's very hard to damage a plant using an LED grow light. It takes "a high level of unfamiliarity", to be kind, or negligence. HPS lights generate a lot of heat and, if a grower wasn't attentive, the heat could rapidly cause tissue death. In contrast, an LED produces very little heat. A typical description is that they're "warm to the touch". I've seen pictures of plants touching LED bars and there's no tissue damage.

What about harm to the plant caused by excess light? Not easy to do, ref. my comment above. I had a dimmer fail in a 330 watt light. The plant was at 1100±µmol and the dimmer went out, so the plant was at 1350 or so. The only way I caught it is that the temperature reading on the AC Infinity Controller 69 went up and I happened to see it. When I walked into the garage, I could see the blaze of light. Fortunately, I had a spare dimmer so I swapped in the good dimmer. The plant had done what was completely normal when a cannabis plant gets excess light - it reduced the surface area exposed to the light by "canoeing". After turning the light down, the leaves started "unfolding" and were at their normal shape with in an hour of so.

I grow in high light conditions and I'd have to say that I probably turn it up too fast every other grow or so. No big deal. When the plant reacts, either by canoeing/tacoing or rotating the leave toward the vertical, as if it were a Venetian blind, you just turn the light down a bit/raise the light an inch.

The worst I've ever done was to bend a cola. The cola bent at a slight angle and stayed that way when I turned the light down.

Growers lose more yield by not turning their light up high enough than the do by turning up their lights too high. Per the paper, "Frontiers in Plant Science - Yield, Potency, and Photosynthesis in Increasing Light Levels", crop yield increase about 4% for each 50µmol of PPFD.

If your grow isn't in the 900-1000µmol region, which is a light level where cannabis thrives in ambient CO2, you can calculate the amount of your crop that you're not getting.

View attachment 5423121

"Can't believe they're posting 2 different par maps. That's confusing as hell."
Those PPFD maps are different because those are different lights. The new model has a lower PPFD, just like I explained in the text. And there are valid reasons for Vipar to make the change, just like I explained in the text.

"Bottom line is i'm now more sceptical than ever about broscience 420 forum posts."
I don't know why you say that but, if there are things you don't understand, ask away. There's a lot of expertise on RIU.

"I have a few wks till finish and it's a nervey time."
No need to be nervous but each to their own. One thing that I got a kick out of when I joined RIU was the acronym "LTFA". If conditions in your grow are decent, you'll get a good crop.

"Looking forward to being able to put a proper evidenced report on the xs2500pro."
You've said similar things in other postings and I'm not sure what you want. A grow light has a limited number of characteristics and the marketing literature covers the big pieces. The 2500 has a blue heavy spectrum so it will tend to grow plants that are compact and bushy. It has a good PPFD map so the light can generate a pretty high yield. The driver isn't dismountable and it's a board light so it's going to heat the grow area a little more than a bar style light with a dismountable driver.

Since you're already using the light, what are you expecting or hoping to learn from a review?

Thanks for the expansive response.
Some interesting points. My xs 2500 pro has a remote power supply btw. Spot on about the short bushy plants and colour spectrum.

You are absolutely right, i am too skeptical. First project with this 2500pro and i've learned a lot between real experience and forum posts.

I now have what i need..i know it doesn't burn at 10" and i know the kind of heat it puts out.

Things are clearer!

Ready to improve next time. Now i just need to nail my finish in soil and decide to flush or not. Another hugely devisive subject area!

Thanks again

 

[Delps8]

Thanks for the expansive response.
Some interesting points. My xs 2500 pro has a remote power supply btw. Spot on about the short bushy plants and colour spectrum.

You're welcome re. the posting.

Re. power supply - appreciate the info. I looked that the XS1500 Pro and it looked riveted on but, now that I check the product listing on Amazon again, the picture of the 2500 shows the driver detached. That's helpful.

You are absolutely right, i am too skeptical. First project with this 2500pro and i've learned a lot between real experience and forum posts.

I now have what i need..i know it doesn't burn at 10" and i know the kind of heat it puts out.

Things are clearer!

Ready to improve next time. Now i just need to nail my finish in soil and decide to flush or not. Another hugely devisive subject area!

Thanks again

Part of the reason that growers are hesitant to turn up the light levels stems from legacy growers urging caution but a lot of that was based on HPS which could damage plants. It's hard to damage a plant with an LED grow light; it takes neglect, to be frank. But there's also, "an abundance of caution" which is part and parcel of wanting to have the best outcome so I do understand the reluctance.

I appreciate the feedback and happy growing!

 

[hairryhands2000]

You're welcome re. the posting.

Re. power supply - appreciate the info. I looked that the XS1500 Pro and it looked riveted on but, now that I check the product listing on Amazon again, the picture of the 2500 shows the driver detached. That's helpful.


Part of the reason that growers are hesitant to turn up the light levels stems from legacy growers urging caution but a lot of that was based on HPS which could damage plants. It's hard to damage a plant with an LED grow light; it takes neglect, to be frank. But there's also, "an abundance of caution" which is part and parcel of wanting to have the best outcome so I do understand the reluctance.

I appreciate the feedback and happy growing!

Thanks. Just finished and could be my last grow owing to disappointment vs sacrifice.

This is my 5th grow at least, all soil grows. Looked pretty good on the plants but every time i harvest i end up with hay smelling crap buds. Yes you get stoned but i want coffeeshop quality and i'm just not getting anywhere near it.

Pretty pissed off. Hung whole plants at perfect temps and still to cure but i doubt i'll see a miracle. Gotta laugh. 3 months of house arrest for a lot of psychedelic hay

 

[Delps8]

Thanks. Just finished and could be my last grow owing to disappointment vs sacrifice.

This is my 5th grow at least, all soil grows. Looked pretty good on the plants but every time i harvest i end up with hay smelling crap buds. Yes you get stoned but i want coffeeshop quality and i'm just not getting anywhere near it.

Pretty pissed off. Hung whole plants at perfect temps and still to cure but i doubt i'll see a miracle. Gotta laugh. 3 months of house arrest for a lot of psychedelic hay

That's a real pisser. Sorry to hear about that.

Have you checked out the "Drying and Curing" forum? You might be able to pick up some ideas or get some help there.

 

[hairryhands2000]

That's a real pisser. Sorry to hear about that.

Have you checked out the "Drying and Curing" forum? You might be able to pick up some ideas or get some help there.

Hey hey, you know i'm currently eating my words. Not for the first time.
The smell has started as they have reached snapping dryness.
This grow thing is such a labour. Even after the grows done it's only just started.
It's hard to commit to so much time with no travel plans etc.
That's even more pronounced as i try to master the cure which is another month.

I have no idea how people manage back to back grows. That's some commitment!

I've dried them as whole plants upside down at 20 degrees c with 60% humidity.
Now they are jarred and feeling a little more optimistic now ! Lol.

The grow tent is all packed away and will be resurrected same time nxt yr for my annual grow. In that time i plan to grok the mistakes of this grow and improve.
Biggest notes this time. I didn't pot up between grow stages and my roots were not as robust as previous grows. That impacted bud size a lot.
Also, scrog net too low.
Next time i'm back to 11litre pots and potting up from small. Heated root matts and veg humidity control. Topping once and Schwazzing.