Changing lights during bloom

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! First time with Autos. Wow they grow fast!!! These girls are 40 days from emergence. Direct seeded in #5 cans. Left is White Widow Express from Phoenix Seeds and the right is Diesel Automatic from RQS. Under 2x Viparspectra 450s. Maybe 12” over. Recently moved from 2.5 x 2 tent to a 2 x 4. Very happy with everything so far. I just built a 44 x 22” Samsung LT-FB22B strip light ready to install but I’m afraid to change lighting at this stage. If it’s not broke don’t fix it. Right?Looking for advise. Should I or not? How high overhead? Should I dim it? Help. Thanks in advance

Specs on your strip light?

How many watts does your old light pull from the wall? And how much does the new one pull?

If they're similar, i see no problem in changing the lights

I did it. Went from 205w real watts blurple to 175w bridgelux build in a 3x3. Averaged 2.5 per plant on 4 plants. I switched over on week 3.
That’s the average size of buds.

Awesome! The Viperspectra 450s pull near 200 watts each from wall. The new light has 6 x Samsung FB22Bs. They draw 51.5 watts each at 1120mA. Using a meanwell HLG-48H-48B with a 100k pot. Used the Ledgardener recs. Plus some for good measure.

Merlin1147 said:

Awesome! The Viperspectra 450s pull near 200 watts each from wall. The new light has 6 x Samsung FB22Bs. They draw 51.5 watts each at 1120mA. Using a meanwell HLG-48H-48B with a 100k pot. Used the Ledgardener recs. Plus some for good measure.

Click to expand...

Thats ~100-150w(HLG-480 maxed out @550w) more but almost twice as much light. Start with 50% driver output at the same height and slowly ramp up within a week or so. A lux meter is a pretty cheap (e3ay 10$) and can still be used to adjust height and brightness. Simply divide the lux meter readings by 69 to get an idea of the actual ppfd.
69.000lx with 3000°k F-strips are ~ 1000μMol/s/m².

Merlin1147 said:

Awesome! The Viperspectra 450s pull near 200 watts each from wall. The new light has 6 x Samsung FB22Bs. They draw 51.5 watts each at 1120mA. Using a meanwell HLG-48H-48B with a 100k pot. Used the Ledgardener recs. Plus some for good measure.

Click to expand...

I think you should switch the lights, and maybe increase the distance by 6 inches or something like that.

As long as they're not too close the plants will adapt and should be able to handle the light within a few days to a week.

I've had situations where i went from CFLs to LEDs and bleached about 3 inches worth of grow on flowering plants. That was to be expected of course, since i went from 46 watts of CFL to a 35W COB at 6 inches.... Even though only that little 3 inch bleach happened, in fact, later on the plant grew into the cob and didn't bleach at all. It became much greener too...

Great info thanks.

Ok I made the change. Have it throttled back to 60% and raised up to 18”. I’ll crank it up and lower it down each day if there are now problems. Nice even light and no shadows. I like it. It also makes taking pics easier. Buds coming along nicely. Thanks all for the input. You’re all the best.

Pour the coals to them...
Definitely use the new fixture and crank it up. Autos love light