LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

pr0fesseur

pr0fesseur

Well-Known Member
It also depends on the quality of the ballast... more efficient ballasts produce less heat.. better ventilation would help as well.
Obviously a cool tube is going to produce less heat...
ALSO 250cfm is TOO SMALL for anything other than a tv stand.. Mind your probably only gettin ~100cfm when all is said and done remember every bend in a hose diminishes the capacity up to 15%+ i have 120mm fans that do 200cfm, that doesent mean the ACTUALLY move that much air...my 3x3x7 cab absolutely needed a 600cfm to keep the temps @ bay. Also remember you must have exaust &&&& Supply @ the same rate or your fan will suffer from backpressure...
http://www.bathroomfanexperts.com/product.php?p=suncourt_tf106&product=112180
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
10 days since seeing the first pistils and only 5 full days (pic taken first thing this morning) with Coral Waves/Red Lifes/Special Actinics, oh and only 3 days of feeding every 30-40 minutes during lights on instead of every 4 hours.


IMG_0844.jpgIMG_0845.jpg
 
AltarNation

AltarNation

Well-Known Member
Got my thinking cap on and I'm going to try to "cooltube" the ballasts and not the bulbs, haha. I am just going to cut a section of ducting in half and lay it across the ballast box, run a strip of tape up each side... should work I think... the bulbs don't really get that hot compared to the ballasts. Also getting rid of a lot of ducting in my setup to increase air transfer rate, and getting rid of some corners in the exhaust path.

While I'm at it I'll float the blower with bungie cords and wrap in something to dampen noise... hopefully I can make things work with the blower I have even though it's low cfm. They wanted to take 25% restocking fee and make me pay the original shipping cost to get it to me, in addition to the shipping to get it back to them! Absurd... I will ebay it if I can't make it work, but I'm going to see what I can do with it first.
 
TechnoMage

TechnoMage

Well-Known Member
pr0fesseur said:
ill see your cool tube and raise you one of these.
http://www.growlightexpress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1033&cPath=5#googlebase

Remember if your going to air cool your T5 DO NOT COOL THE ENTIRE BULB.. ONLY THE LABEL END
the temperature of the label end determines the pressure of the bulb and how well it performs.. the cooler the label end the better the bulb will run and a longer life.
Click to expand...
That's pretty slick, hadn't seen those before. Wouldn't have fit in my cab however, it was only 36"x18".

Here's a shot of that first grow with all the lights in action.
Light Goodness 11-21-2006 9-24-19 PM.jpg
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
UnderCurrentDWC said:
Pr0fesseur?

Do you think a Plazma/led/lcd tv could give off the Nm wave lengths we're looking for?
Click to expand...
Much love for your efforts.

Bulb config question: I see you have your reds next to each other. I placed mine so that Actinc blues are in between the Red Lifes, outside of each a Coral Wave. My thought being to help spread the light. Any thoughts?

Plazma: My personal opinion is that we want the ability to control the amount of far red and deep blue
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
Grow Light HO T 5: I emailed them to inquire whether it has separate o/o switches.

TechnoMagi Their product page says 4ft.
 
UnderCurrentDWC

UnderCurrentDWC

Active Member
PetFlora said:
Much love for your efforts.

Bulb config question: I see you have your reds next to each other. I placed mine so that Actinc blues are in between the Red Lifes, outside of each a Coral Wave. My thought being to help spread the light. Any thoughts?

Plazma: My personal opinion is that we want the ability to control the amount of far red and deep blue
Click to expand...
Fiji purps are 50-50 blue/red
The order of bulbs in that fixture is:
Fiji
Red sun/life
454
75.25
red sun/life
Fiji

I didn't receive my whole order from Aquarium specialty or else I'd have it set up like this:

Fiji
Red sun/life
454
75.25
red sun/life
+
fiji
red sun/life

Happy growing
UCDWC~
 
Triplezero1

Triplezero1

Active Member
AltarNation said:
I'm not entirely satisfied with the temperature inside my tent... I've got a panasonic whisperline @240 cfm but heat is still building up over the course of the day, slowly rising to 80-85 ambient in a room that's something like 70-75 ambient. I'm not sure what would have happened if I let it keep building up the rest of the day, because I opened it to check things out.

Anyway, as a solution, I am strongly considering replacing the ballast box on my unit with a 2x4 and moving the whole ballast box outside of the grow area. Lengthening all the wires sounds like a pain in my ass, but I don't want to heat-stress my plants. As "cool" as these lights run compared to a HID (ie, the ballasts don't need to be remote) I still feel the heat would be a lot more manageable overall with the ballasts outside the tent. I'd recommend anyone getting T5's to go more along the "build your own" route and use remote ballasts just for the extra convenient level of heat control it yields. The reflectors right up on the bulbs are cool to the touch, but the ballast box gets pretty uncomfortably warm.
Click to expand...
Check out this link. http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=19811&cmpid=03csegb&ref=3312&subref=AA&CAWELAID=525426348
im thinking of the same idea.
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
After several emails to Grow Light Express, I am told it is the standard 46", and may behave as BB does in the ability to be used in 2/4/6/8 bulbs at a time
 
PetFlora

PetFlora

Well-Known Member
AltarNation said:
I'm not entirely satisfied with the temperature inside my tent... I've got a panasonic whisperline @240 cfm but heat is still building up over the course of the day, slowly rising to 80-85 ambient in a room that's something like 70-75 ambient. I'm not sure what would have happened if I let it keep building up the rest of the day, because I opened it to check things out.

Anyway, as a solution, I am strongly considering replacing the ballast box on my unit with a 2x4 and moving the whole ballast box outside of the grow area. Lengthening all the wires sounds like a pain in my ass, but I don't want to heat-stress my plants. As "cool" as these lights run compared to a HID (ie, the ballasts don't need to be remote) I still feel the heat would be a lot more manageable overall with the ballasts outside the tent. I'd recommend anyone getting T5's to go more along the "build your own" route and use remote ballasts just for the extra convenient level of heat control it yields. The reflectors right up on the bulbs are cool to the touch, but the ballast box gets pretty uncomfortably warm.
Click to expand...
Unless you are growing inside a tent, the BB has vent holes along the reflectors. You could also put a light-weight fan on the top (facing up) and suck the hot air up & out.
 
organicbynature

organicbynature

Active Member
Psytranceorgy said:
On the other hand, we as consumers are free to study the spectrum of similar, competing, and less expensive T5 HO bulbs produced by other companies, and make educated purchasing decisions:

AquaticLife Roseate http://aquaticlife.com/
Aqua Medic Plant Grow http://www.aqua-medic.com/
ATI Purple Plus http://www.atiaquaristik.com/en/
Coralife Colormax http://coralifeproducts.com/
Current/TrueLumen Freshwater Flora http://www.current-usa.com/
Giesemann Aquaflora http://www.giesemann.de/
JBL Solar Ultra Color http://www.jbl.de/en/
Wave Point Color Wave(same as Red Wave) http://www.wave-point.com/
ZooMed Flora Sun http://www.zoomed.com/

I would paste the spectrum graphs here for you, but some of them are embedded in Flash, and are not 'saveable'

The above all have a similar spectrum (some look better than others...for sure). God (and Thomas Pohl) only knows if they are similar to the KZ Fiji Purple's spectrum... but I suspect that they are... Having said that, Korallen Zucht is without a doubt highly reputed among all these, and the Fiji Purple bulb in particular is held in high regard among enthusiasts (thus the price tag). It is also, after all, the bulb that pr0f has actually flowered cannabis with! So again, I'm not dissing on that bulb so much as I am ticked off that we cannot get a spectrum to study so that we are able to make an educated purchasing decision, without going through all the work (time and money!) of comparing other bulbs to the Fiji Purple ourselves via direct experimentation...

Of course you still want to pick up your UVL Red Suns and use them! They are unique in their spectrum, and you definitely want some of it!
Click to expand...
Does anyone have experience with any of these Fiji Purple alternatives yet? I'm struggling with paying twice as much for a bulb that I don't know the spectrum for when the reason I'm paying extra to begin with is spectrum control. Has anyone seen any of these going next to a Fiji Purple to compare visually?

I think ohiogrown has both the ATI Purple and the Fiji, can you tell us how you think they compare?
 
AltarNation

AltarNation

Well-Known Member
PetFlora said:
Unless you are growing inside a tent, the BB has vent holes along the reflectors. You could also put a light-weight fan on the top (facing up) and suck the hot air up & out.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm growing in inside a cramped closet with a tent like door, haha... but I digress... I also do not have a regular BB, but a knockoff brand. A lightweight fan on top of it is not a bad idea, but I decided to go one further with it; I'm going to put together a custom piece of half-duct along all the ballast vents, then attach that half-duct right to my exhaust line... should result in a cool-tube-like effect on the ballasts themselves.
 
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