Switching from LED to HID lighting

[dm7211961@att.net]

Hi all,
ive been using a king 800 watt LED light with IR along with 2 250 watt cfl 6500k during veg and 2100k for flowering and 2 bags of exhale homegrown CO2, and using Technaflora recipe for success nutes, inside a 4X4X7 tent with previous great success, untill my last grow. On the last grow the buds after drying became very airy and light, In the past theyve been mostly dense but i also used alot of cfl side lighting in other grows.
What im getting at is am i better off with an mh/hps setup? After research im finding 600 watt minimum for my size tent. Another question i have is with this type of setup are the 250 watt CFLs nessasary or even helpful.

My main concern is heat build up. Im running a 4 bucket super recirculating deep water culture system i use 2 giant 7" by 1 1/2" airstones with a commercial air pump pushing 1200 gph, for recirculation i used a 1150 gph water pump spraying into each bucket from top. The four buckets are the grow containers plus a control bucket. The bottoms are connected with 2" pvc and top connected with 3/4" from water pump. Inside control bucket i have a 3/8" stainless steel coil 50 feet long connected to 100' of garden hose full of water with 145gph pump for circulating cold water through mini fridge to act as a Hydroponic chiller. My main concern with switching to hid lighting is water/nutrient temperature. Ive had some ladies develop root rot in past with a single bucket hydro grow even while using great white. The chiller was only able to keep my nutrient soup an average temperature of 70° Fahrenheit during this past sweltering northeast ohio summer. There was never any sign of root rot but im paranoid about it now. I add 3ml per gallon of hydrogen peroxide each week to help afyer building up to it.
Ive been following your newsletter since i got back into growing again these last few years and i would appreciate your advice and recommendations with regards to hid lighting. My first thought was getting a new LED light ive been looking at the dominator buy sunnine lighting its an 800 watt led cob light with cree technology. That was my first thought but then really thought about it and started leaning towards hid instead for those dense thick heavy outdoor looking buds.
Again thank you for you time

PS My favorite strain is blue mystic feminized from Nirvana shop my goal is to grow giant dense heavily laden with sticky tricomes. In the past ive always had to harvest my blue mystic plants early for one reason or another.
The plan is to grow a couple in my outdoor veg garden summer of 17 since ive had the best success in last few summers doing this but so far ive grown the free seeds that come with my orders for indoor grows. Well next year theyll be blue mystic. I just want to be able to grow them to the same quality inside with my hydro system

[dm7211961@att.net]

[Sonnyhad]

Looks great! I just got a cob light and like it so far, very bright! Will see if it helps the yield. I got it for flowering, so that's the temp color I got, 3000k

[NebulaHaze]

Just a quick tip, I've used Great White before for root rot, and it also didn't work for me. I've had much better luck with Hydroguard, even when it gets into the 80s in my tent (and I don't use a chiller, so that means the water can get into the 80s sometimes). Hydroguard colonizes your reservoir with a specific type of bacteria that fights root rot even if it gets really hot. As a bonus Hydroguard is really cheap, plus it's concentrated so it lasts a long time! It also doesn't affect the pH, which is nice. However, if you use Hydroguard you need to stop using Hydrogen Peroxide for the rest of the grow, because it will kill all the bacteria. If you do try it, you need to use Hydroguard with every reservoir change, and your plants will actually get more resistant over time as the bacterial colony builds up in your tank. It's kind of like how you "seed" an aquarium with good bacteria.

I can't speak to what your experience with your LED vs an HPS would be, but I can guarantee that you will get dense buds under a 600W HPS as long as the plants are healthy and the environment is good! On average growers get about 10-21 ounces under a 600W. If you have an exhaust fan connected to your HPS to vent heat outdoors, it will be really effective at controlling the temperature. With LEDs and CFLs, the heat just sort of hangs in the tent, but if you get an HPS with an air cooled hood, the hood contains the heat near the bulb and the exhaust fan vents it out.

I also just wanted to add that I agree about Blue Mystic. It's a great strain!

Thanks for posting and we're glad to have you here!

[Flockshot]

How about Hydroguard in coco for root maintenance/problems?

[dm7211961@att.net]

Thanks Nebula ive been following your newsletter for years and always return to previous articles before beginning each stage of my grows. Ive learned so much from you and serious. Thank you again for everything and especially the personal reply to this post.

I have since switched to hydroguard, no more peroxide or great white.

Are there any certain brands or types of light combos youd recommend for my setup

4X4X7 grow tent
4 plant grow in RDWC

My options i think are:
400wMH/600wHPS combo
or
600w MH/HPS combo


Right now im running 4" centrifical 220 cfm exhaust with 20" carbon filter. and 4" 105cfm intake

Is that adequate or should i up the cfm and size to 6" 440cfm exhaust 220 intake.
Thank you again grow weed easy "ROCKS"

[agi]

I have been considering adding some 600W MH Lights into my flower room to compliment the 1000W Phantom Double Ended HPS that I run for flower. Is this the best way to add blue spectrum to flower room? I am mostly looking to add this spectrum to add greater yield to my harvest weights. Am I on the right track or is there another better way? Anyone? Thank you

[NebulaHaze]

How big is your grow space? Light is like food to plants, and when it comes to bud growth they care more about power than spectrum. Up to a certain point, the more light you add, the bigger the yield. If you're looking purely for increased yields you'll get better results from adding more HPS than adding MH lights. 600W HPS are the most efficient of all the grow lights, and you can keep them a lot closer than a 1000W, so you end up losing less light. 3 x 600W HPS at a total of 1800W will yield more than 2 x 1000W at a total of 2000W.

If you have a big space, you might also look into a light mover, since they'll help you stretch your light over a wider area, increasing yields without really increasing electricity use.

Is it possible to post a picture of your plants in their setup? Maybe we'll be able to spot something that could help

[agi]

thank you Nebula and others, this dialogue is quite helpful. Yes, this is about commercial growing. Though small to start we are licensed and intend to be around for a while. So some of this questions and ideas are about long term success, quality and quantity. And yes, I will look into a light mover. I can easily understand the theoretical benefits. But I wonder how that will apply to a room with one, two or three dozen lights. Will look into that. I dont know who to comment to first or how to best use the forum so I may be answering different peoples suggestions here at the same time. To Green Thumb, I use 300w CMH in Veg and found that to be a great switch over 600W MH lights. Back to Nebula Haze, am I reading you right in thinking that adding more HPS in flower, like 600W and looking into a light mover is better than adding MH? I will try to attach some photos that I took of the room. But not sure how yet. thanks for a great dialogue.

[agi]

thank you for that info. I have plenty of space- flower room is 50x25 with 13' ceilings. Currently I suspend my 1000 Watt Double Ended Phantom Hoods about 3' above the canopy, spaced about 4' on center. I am pushing about sharing about 6 plants for every 2 lights. They are being netted. I can produce about 1.5 lbs per light which is good. But as I have just been granted a preliminary approval for a state license, I am gearing up for better quality and quantity. I thought by adding MH to the flower room I would add spectrum variety and increase yield that way. But maybe not. Also considering trying some LED as an alternate experiment in a separate flower room. I will send a picture tomorrow. What is a light mover? I never even heard of that.

[007]

Have you read much on LEC/CMH lights? GWE has good info on them on the site, tons of inspiring videos on youtube as well as some grow journals right on the forum here with amazing results. I'm in the process of switching all my LED to CMH. 315 watts covers a 4x4 area and theres more blue to them than HPS, along with UV-B. Might be just what you're looking for?

[NebulaHaze]

Green75 is using LEC grow lights and has some pretty neat journals to check out!

[NebulaHaze]

thank you for that info. I have plenty of space- flower room is 50x25 with 13' ceilings. Currently I suspend my 1000 Watt Double Ended Phantom Hoods about 3' above the canopy, spaced about 4' on center. I am pushing about sharing about 6 plants for every 2 lights. They are being netted. I can produce about 1.5 lbs per light which is good. But as I have just been granted a preliminary approval for a state license, I am gearing up for better quality and quantity. I thought by adding MH to the flower room I would add spectrum variety and increase yield that way. But maybe not. Also considering trying some LED as an alternate experiment in a separate flower room. I will send a picture tomorrow. What is a light mover? I never even heard of that.

If you're interested in being a commercial grower, all I can say is the ones I know (who sell to dispensaries in bulk around here) use HPS grow lights as opposed to other types. I'm a hobbyist grower and I've never grown commercially myself (so definitely take anything I saw with a grain of salt!), but I do know about a half dozen successful commercial growers and they all stick to almost 100% HPS for the flowering stage. There's nothing wrong with the other types of grow light but if you're concerned most about yields/electricity than you'll probably get the most consistent results with HPS. Since it's a mature technology there's a lot fewer variables than with the newer types of light. But HPS also work great when combined with other types of grow lights, too! Every type of grow light will get the job done, and your skill has a lot to do with it!

A light mover is a device that puts your grow light on a track that slowly goes back and forth. This makes it so that you can not only keep your grow light closer to the plants without light burn, but you can also use it to cover a larger area with the same grow light. So you might be able to keep your 1000W just 2 feet away and have it cover a larger space. The fact that the light is moving gives your leaves a "break" so they have time to use all that extra light, and it also prevents hot spots.

One big factor for maximizing yields is defoliation, especially if you've been growing very bushy plants with lots of fan leaves on the colas. One of the easiest ways to defoliate without worrying about ill effects may be schwazzing, since you can't really mess it up. It basically involves defoliating your plant right before the switch to 12/12, and then again at week 3 of the flowering stage. This helps the buds get light and bulk up, compared to if all the buds were covered with leaves.

[agi]

[agi]

So those pics were meant to post with my reply to Nebula Haze and Green Thumb. 50'x20' under 1000W HPS. Room is half empty and some lights are off even as we build out. A dividing wall coming to cut the room in half.