I just have a hard time understanding people who refuse to spend money on decent lighting, but then spend even more money putting an AC unit in a small grow space to deal with the heat generated by all the cheap lights they have crammed in there, and then also on bubblers and UV lights to deal with chloramine in tap water.
The backlog on parts right now is ridiculous. I was originally going to go with 4x QB132 from HLG mounted to angle aluminum... then I saw how long the backorder was estimated to be.... then I looked at COB from Timber and realized it was 30+ days out as well (although that's build time and the area of Cali they make those in was in lockdown at the time).
Your plants look fine, so don't take this as an insult, but if people who have been growing for years are jealous of those plants then they haven't learned anything from the time they've spent growing. The plants from my first few grows looked just like yours and I grew them under COB LEDs at around 45W/sqft (280 actual watts in a 2.5' x 2.5' tent).
Yeah, it seems like everyone is out of the Samsung F-Strips right now, too.
What did you change? From what I've been reading that much power on COB lights in a tent that size should have been more than sufficient? (this is an indoor growing noob talking, lights aren't my strong suit yet)
I went with more efficient whiter LEDs. When I first got my 4x4 tent, I went with two of those COB LED lights (600W total minus about 20W from the fans). I built my new lights during veg with my current grow and the difference in growth and overall health of the plants, just in the first week or two, was unbelievable...and my new lights only draw a max of 500W (I had them dimmed for veg and still only have them running at 490W).
Sorry, you've probably posted this elsewhere but do you have a link for your current lights? What company did you get them from or was it a DIY
And that is just a total waste of energy.
Can you please explain this to me in dummy terms ? How could it possibly be better just because the spectrum is slightly different ? Thank you sir.
DIY based off THIS thread.
Check a page or two back where Corey explained it. It has to due with lower levels of IR being emitted from LED.
It seems weak to you because you are new to this and don't understand how efficient some LEDs can be. Do you really think HLG and Timber would be specifying 480W lights for a 4x4 growing area if they weren't going to give great results? And, no, I don' thave pics of the buds from my lights yet because I just put them in a month ago. There are plenty of others who have posted their results under the same strips, at even less watts/sqft, though. Here's one from my shitty Chinese COBs, though...Let's see how yours compare when you harvest. Do you think I would have upgraded if I didn't know I could do better?
Nope, because I don't need one to know what I will get from even coverage with these strips. Your posts are a clear indicator that having a par meter doesn't mean anything. If it did, and you knew how to read LED specifications, then you wouldn't have told me in a previous post that I need to at least double the strips in my tent.