Are my flower lights not red enough?

So far my 900w viparspectea had been great to veg my 4x4 tent. I started with some mystery seeds am now wondering if the issue is my lights or genetics. I've got a girl 3 weeks into flower and her buds are very far behind my buddies who is less than a week ahead of me. He is growing known genetics but is also under a 1k watt hps. We've both been running close to same nuits. I'm in coco, very close to 1000ppm, 77 to 80 when lights are on, 50rh I'm a 4x8 area with 900w mars hydro on top of this one plant which has nearly took over nearly half the tent after 2 months in veg and 3 weeks in flower. She doesn't have much smell at all. I've brought in some known good kush genetics flipped to flower less than a week ago after 6 to 7 weeks of veg they smell more pungent that my girl 3 weeks into flower. I hate to waste time and energy if you guys think my lights are enough red and maybe I should add some red supplement to help?. I recently put my 3 week old flower under 2 400w viparspectea turned all way up and my youngest that I just flipped under the mars 900w. I've seen claims of good results under these lights but just fear there's not enough red. Won't let me link the lights but we have a mars2 900w and 2 viparspectra 450 dimmable

The vipar 450w are 200w lights. The mars 900 is a 364w light.
So you have 764w of light compared to your mates 1000w hps.

Yes the extra red would be beneficial to a degree but the issue is you have 75% of the light he does.
He is blasting them with light and you are tickling it into them.
No idea what space your mate is running but if he has any sense it would be 4x4 or 5x5 and your spreading your lesser lights over 8x4.

You should be able to lower your lights though. Your plants are not filling that space so you should be able to get them pretty good overall if you lower.

Its a common theme with those types of light, great in veg, lacking in flower.

Your just spreading the light you have too thin, condense your plants a bit, looks like you have room and amplify your light by lowering and covering a smaller area.

That's the best advice I can offer without saying buy more lights or buy different lights.

Yes obviously genetics could also be playing a part, but I can only talk about the evidence in front of me.

Thanks for the advice bro. My leaves had stayed pretty straight out and I was afraid of getting too close and creating a hot spot. Well I'll start lowering what would you say ? I'll measure when I get home but I think I'm 20" from the tallest sites. Would you recommend cobbs or any of the ufo for more red? I don't think I have any UV color. This my first run, really wanted to go LED just didn't wanna break the bank too bad, afraid of the heat from hps as well as electric bill. I know they get the job done. I'm open to recommendations if I were willing to spend another 500 to 1000 for my flower tent?

Pawnee said:

Thanks for the advice bro. My leaves had stayed pretty straight out and I was afraid of getting too close and creating a hot spot. Well I'll start lowering what would you say ? I'll measure when I get home but I think I'm 20" from the tallest sites. Would you recommend cobbs or any of the ufo for more red? I don't think I have any UV color. This my first run, really wanted to go LED just didn't wanna break the bank too bad, afraid of the heat from hps as well as electric bill. I know they get the job done. I'm open to recommendations if I were willing to spend another 500 to 1000 for my flower tent?

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Knock them down 6" to start with. A cheap lux app on your phone might be useful just to give you an idea.

There are lots of options for that sort of price range. It might be a good idea to buy something to light half your tent and use you existing lights for the other half.
Most of us use white light, cobs or boards or strips, though its not 100% full spectrum its a very full spectrum and they all perform very well (provided its not some amazon light with cob in the title for the sake of it)
Work with what you have, push those plants a bit closer to each other and lower them lights for this run. You should still be able to get reasonable results.
While your running this crop you can use the time to do a bit of research, check out companies like Horticultural lighting group, Timber grow lights, bcBlondes, pacific lighting concept and look at the aussie LED company cutter.com.au.
You will find all those companies sell white lights either cob or board base and have very high efficiency with reliable coverage and wattage information.
Also for what its worth HPS is hot but its not difficult to deal with and you need good ventilation regardless as all lights create heat.
The cheapest option would be to buy a 600w hps to cover one half of your tent for the time being and move your LEDs to cover the other. But as I said if you move those plants about and work with what you have you should see good results as you are.
Honestly its entirely up to you how you play it and how much you want to spend.
HPS or LED, the main thing is you need enough light.

So right now you would say I only have enough light for just over half the tent ? If I push them together I think I would need to do some more trimming down below ? For I don't think the lights would penetrate much. There's so many LED to try and choose from. I guess I just have a fear of dropping 800 to 1000 on 1 light and only get have the wattage and light they are advertising. May I ask a little about your setup? Like what lights are you running? My room has no exhaust out. I'm pretty air tight sealed up, 2 tents in one room. A.c. coming in 2 carbon filters scrubbing and 1 TnB bottle with no exhaust out.

coreywebster said:

A cheap lux app on your phone might be useful just to give you an idea.

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i bought a cheapp-o chinese meter off ebay. best money i've spent. convert to ppfd (roughly) and you get a much better idea of where to hang your lights.

Pawnee said:

Won't let me link the lights but we have a mars2 900w and 2 viparspectra 450 dimmable

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since you've already got these, why not add 2 more vipar 450s? put the mars in the middle and the vipars around it to cover the whole 4x4.

rkymtnman said:

since you've already got these, why not add 2 more vipar 450s? put the mars in the middle and the vipars around it to cover the whole 4x4.

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I've been getting the fear they don't have the red spectrum I need. I was thinking needed more UV and infared?

Pawnee said:

I've been getting the fear they don't have the red spectrum I need. I was thinking needed more UV and infared?

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well UV is lower than the blue spectrum. and it is beneficial to have for sure. sunlight has a ton of it.

and IR is important too.

like @coreywebster said, you need more light than waht you have in a 4x4. if you used 3x3 of your tent, you have enough already.

that being said, what is your budget? do you want to use the lights you have? or start from scratch?

Pawnee said:

So right now you would say I only have enough light for just over half the tent ? If I push them together I think I would need to do some more trimming down below ? For I don't think the lights would penetrate much. There's so many LED to try and choose from. I guess I just have a fear of dropping 800 to 1000 on 1 light and only get have the wattage and light they are advertising. May I ask a little about your setup? Like what lights are you running? My room has no exhaust out. I'm pretty air tight sealed up, 2 tents in one room. A.c. coming in 2 carbon filters scrubbing and 1 TnB bottle with no exhaust out.

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I think you have enough light to use maybe just over half of your tent. say 4x5ish

I have various lights. The first LEDs I got I built myself, which was 700w of COB bars. Then I got 2x HLG 260w kits for the other half of my tent. 4x8.
Then I moved and changed to a bunch of smaller tents and got another hlg260w kit which on its own is in a 2x4. So currently I have a 3x3 with some of the cob bars running around 300-350w and a 1mx1m tent running the 2 hlg260s dimmed to make 320w between them.
I also have two new boards that a guy on here designed and had made which have UV and higher cri rating, those are called High Lights, but not commercially available. There are a few threads about them if you use the search function.
Before I used LED I had 3x 600w hps in cooltubes in a 4x8.

A lot of us built our own lights which is very simple to do, though may not seem that way when you first start learning about it.
Thats the best value if your prepared to do it.

Sealed rooms I have never tried but I imagine the less heat your creating the less your AC is going to cost. So there's a good argument for LEDs, especially if you have no place to even air cool a hps.

rkymtnman said:

i bought a cheapp-o chinese meter off ebay. best money i've spent. convert to ppfd (roughly) and you get a much better idea of where to hang your lights.

Click to expand...

Ive been meaning to get one myself, I just wing it. What did you pay for yours?

coreywebster said:

Ive been meaning to get one myself, I just wing it. What did you pay for yours?

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13 bucks off ebay. it was from china (obviously, lol) search for the 1010B model lux meter.

rkymtnman said:

well UV is lower than the blue spectrum. and it is beneficial to have for sure. sunlight has a ton of it.

and IR is important too.

like @coreywebster said, you need more light than waht you have in a 4x4. if you used 3x3 of your tent, you have enough already.

that being said, what is your budget? do you want to use the lights you have? or start from scratch?

Click to expand...

I'm trying to keep it around 1k and under I was looking at some California light works this morning ?

Pawnee said:

So far my 900w viparspectea had been great to veg my 4x4 tent. I started with some mystery seeds am now wondering if the issue is my lights or genetics. I've got a girl 3 weeks into flower and her buds are very far behind my buddies who is less than a week ahead of me. He is growing known genetics but is also under a 1k watt hps. We've both been running close to same nuits. I'm in coco, very close to 1000ppm, 77 to 80 when lights are on, 50rh I'm a 4x8 area with 900w mars hydro on top of this one plant which has nearly took over nearly half the tent after 2 months in veg and 3 weeks in flower. She doesn't have much smell at all. I've brought in some known good kush genetics flipped to flower less than a week ago after 6 to 7 weeks of veg they smell more pungent that my girl 3 weeks into flower. I hate to waste time and energy if you guys think my lights are enough red and maybe I should add some red supplement to help?. I recently put my 3 week old flower under 2 400w viparspectea turned all way up and my youngest that I just flipped under the mars 900w. I've seen claims of good results under these lights but just fear there's not enough red. Won't let me link the lights but we have a mars2 900w and 2 viparspectra 450 dimmable

Click to expand...

Im doing my first led grow under a viparspectra 1350.. Im 2.5 weeks in now, my light is about 10" from top of plant.. This is an auto Bubblegum.. In coir/perlite with advanced nutrients.

Pawnee said:

I'm trying to keep it around 1k and under I was looking at some California light works this morning ?

Click to expand...

i had a CLW older model . they are well made and good customer service. that 550 model they make now looks pretty nice with the progammable spectrum/controller.

Pawnee said:

I'm trying to keep it around 1k and under I was looking at some California light works this morning ?

Click to expand...

Those California Lights look amazing. I took a page from their play book when I designed my lights. I run 4 channels, a base of Samsung strips, a UVA/violet/ blues channel, a red/photo red/IR channel and a far red channel for bedtime. All on dimmers. I like the idea of being able to tailor the spectrum to the stage of growth and being able to modifying the morphology with spectrum.

coreywebster said:

The vipar 450w are 200w lights. The mars 900 is a 364w light.
So you have 764w of light compared to your mates 1000w hps.

Yes the extra red would be beneficial to a degree but the issue is you have 75% of the light he does.
He is blasting them with light and you are tickling it into them.
No idea what space your mate is running but if he has any sense it would be 4x4 or 5x5 and your spreading your lesser lights over 8x4.

You should be able to lower your lights though. Your plants are not filling that space so you should be able to get them pretty good overall if you lower.

Its a common theme with those types of light, great in veg, lacking in flower.

Your just spreading the light you have too thin, condense your plants a bit, looks like you have room and amplify your light by lowering and covering a smaller area.

That's the best advice I can offer without saying buy more lights or buy different lights.

Yes obviously genetics could also be playing a part, but I can only talk about the evidence in front of me.

Click to expand...

I've noticed this too, the blurple will veg very well but flowers lack density...
What do you recommend in the way of LED or power efficient lighting for dense flowers?

rkymtnman said:

i bought a cheapp-o chinese meter off ebay. best money i've spent. convert to ppfd (roughly) and you get a much better idea of where to hang your lights.

Click to expand...

Link to that ppfd

Blent said:

I've noticed this too, the blurple will veg very well but flowers lack density...
What do you recommend in the way of LED or power efficient lighting for dense flowers?

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It seems to be that to get similar results density wise as say hps then your looking at using the same wattage per square foot, been 50w/psf with these less efficient LEDs and around 30w/psf with higher efficient LEDs.

As far as which those are , lights like timbergrowlights, horticultural lighting group, ChilLED, Pacific lighting concept, Atreum lighting, solskins, all fall into that higher efficiency bracket.