LED, MH or HPS for veg , please tell meyour experience and preference

my friend has been doing a crop for 3 month
veg only with 3 big led lights. they seem very
small for 3 month old . . i lent him 1000 w of hps
and now they have shot up.. . what are your
thoughts because we have just put some blue
cheese in the veg tent under the led .. . i dont
know if to stick with led for veg or go with mh
or even hps .. please tell me your experience .
yeild is our main priority closely followed by
taste and high .. thank you

600watt metal halide for veg, 600w Hps for flower. At 3 months you should be flowering already. Ditch the damn LED. These things are children's toys.


i know I know 50 people are going to come in and contrarily claim that LED are the best thing in the world.. Whatever.......

ive started my first ever grow.. so by no means an expert,

have used aquarium 72w leds to germ to seedlings then found growth slowed, could be due to the small pots but have now got them under 2x150w halides so will see if tht makes a difference

No one said need.. We're talking about reality. If you want realistic results, ditch the toys, and roll with the big boys. I do not see LEDs providing efficient results based upon cost to harvest ratio.

Stick with what's actually Proven not to waste your time or money

i know you're going to point to your t5 supplemented led light grow and brag you got 4 wet ounces out of your grow, I call bull shit on this to begin with. Your buds are stretched and immature, and will never mature because they are simply not getting enough light .

the t5's gave you the results, not the led's if they did, you'd roll with led's alone....

good day to your sir

ill get the brand names of the led's tonight and that will tell us if they are crap or not.. he paid a lot of money for them but every1 gets ripped off now and then i suppose lol.. some interesting opinions and experiences here keep them coming please

BenFranklin said:

600watt metal halide for veg, 600w Hps for flower. At 3 months you should be flowering already. Ditch the damn LED. These things are children's toys.


i know I know 50 people are going to come in and contrarily claim that LED are the best thing in the world.. Whatever.......

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its a friend who used the led's im just helping him finish.. i let him use 1000w of hps and what a diffrence it made.. i normally use hps all the way through and at 5 weekz my plants are as big as his and his are 3 month. thats what made me want to ask people preference and experiences.. so i agree with you

u need 6500k for veg and 2700k for flowering and ive found that a mix of them is very nice but if u got money go with a MH/Hps set up best u can get 400 to 600 watts is nice

In my opinion LEDS are useful in closets or tents where heat is a concern. I use MH/HPS, VHO t5, and 1-740 w LED in different areas of my rooms, and as far as plant and bud development go, the MH/HPS are the best, VHO t5 a close 2nd, and LED last.

^^^^^ led and induction are kicking the shit out of hps. One apache at660 will match a 1000w in yield. 4 a51 sgs 160's will match a 1000w in yield. One inda gro induction with led pontoon 460w will out perform a 750w hps 3 will match 2 1000w. All these lights will produce far better quality and denser buds. They have all higher par and cri. I have 3 inda gros and 1 a51 sgs 160 155w. One a51 panel will out perform a 400w hps. Hid is slowly becoming obsolete.

I went indoor last year after many years of outdoor. With no pre-conceived preferences/bias, tried LED's for a couple of grows. With my limited but well documented experience, and a side by side comparison with my son, using anything else other than LED's for vegging is a waste of money, the extra hassles/dealing with heat and associated costs doesn't seem to make any difference other than overall cost of operations when vegging with MH or HPS. My son vegged his with HPS, clones from the same mother and mine were healthier/larger in the same period of time. End yield wasn't as good though, I'm still on the fence with LED's for flowering but there were too many variables and fuck-ups to blame it solely on the LED's so will be making some adjustments in a new room and give LED's another shot at flowering next round. For vegging though, I wouldn't consider changing up. If higher end (A51) LED's don't perform well in flowering next round, longer term I'd probably go vegging with LED's and flowering with MH or HPS, nothing wrong with mixing it up, take advantage of the lower operational cost of LED's with the longer light times during veg, then flower at 12/12 with the higher operational cost but more yield (TBD) using MH or HPS. 2 cents, from un-biased experience, not pre-conceived preferences...

Let me take you on a short journey.

My own led hosing came 3+ years ago. At that point I never had a decent grow using 400w hps, I even changed the bulb every other grow. I finally stopped for ~3 years. One day I was at B & N scanning the shelves when I saw a High Times. I thumbed through it and was smitten by the full page adv for a ufo 90.

I wanted to grow again, and this seemed like the solution to my problems (I had never considered hot5 at that time)

I spent a few days of www research (this before I joined RIU), the 411 was pretty much the same lies many are using today. I called a US company and was offered A DEAL- $100 OFF + FREE SHIPPING; $360. The price was right. I now know it does have a good spectrum balance, but I have tried using this r/b ufo in every conceivable way including combining it with other leds during flower. Will it flower? Yes, but my results were always mediocre at best

Bad experience aside, I could see led lighting as the future, commercially, and eventually horticulturally. I recently started RetroFit LED Technologies to replace lighting in all-types of businesses

For the last couple years white diodes have improved to the point that they not only rival hps, they are beginning to surpass it.

LEDs horticulture future is also in white leds. Several companies have excellent products right now, with RIU threads supporting their abilities to grow mmj

red eyes420 said:

ill get the brand names of the led's tonight and that will tell us if they are crap or not.. he paid a lot of money for them but every1 gets ripped off now and then i suppose lol.. some interesting opinions and experiences here keep them coming please

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hyroot said:

^^^^^ led and induction are kicking the shit out of hps. One apache at660 will match a 1000w in yield. 4 a51 sgs 160's will match a 1000w in yield. One inda gro induction with led pontoon 460w will out perform a 750w hps 3 will match 2 1000w. All these lights will produce far better quality and denser buds. They have all higher par and cri. I have 3 inda gros and 1 a51 sgs 160 155w. One a51 panel will out perform a 400w hps. Hid is slowly becoming obsolete.

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Maybe with 1 plant 12" below the light, but if you are growing outside the direct line of sight to the LED lamp, you get dick. There is NO spread to LED. My LED fixture is an Advanced 740w that is 16"x36" and will do 3 plants OK. I have another 12"x48" VHO that can handle 4 plants MUCH better than LED. Way better spread and penetration of the canopy

Not sure if this was mentioned but don't led grows need some sort of supplemental lighting. or has that been factored out with new technologies?

The problem is that the non-led enthusiast use led as a all incimpassing term. Well every led is far different than the others. As where hps are pretty similar across the board. There is variance, but not to the levels in the led market.
if you measure the amount of light at the canopy you will see that most led's don't produce the same amount of light everywhere on the canopy. Matching numbers in just the center doesn't cut it and is a way that led companies manipulate data.
My apache will match and beat eye hortilux all across my 4x4 tray. And it does this from even higher than 1000hps so it actually has more penetration. But there isn't an other led out that can do this. And cost is an issue for most.

long story short...the actual output numbers(ppf and ppfd) will show you the true capabilities of a lamp. But this info isn't totally readily available. But it is proven science that yield is directly related to the amount of light received easier in umols.

Like I said 50 people will come in claiming led's are better than hids. We even have one guy claim that LEDs are the best in veggie growth because him and his son tested an HPS Vs an led in a veggie grow?? And well the led didn't yield as much, but it's 10x more awesome!

seriously???? Shut the fuck up already. Let's see you morons hook up a 10 x 30 room and then brag about how great your fucking led is. Stop wasting people's time and money with BULLSHIT

PetFlora said:

So much anger. There is nothing for you her, and yet you continue to spew venom

Makes me think you have a lot to lose, or the idea of leaving the 20th century scares the shit out of you

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Reminds me of the 90's when people would look at me like I was the grim reaper when I was installing servers and networks in their offices. You know... I was the one that was contributing to mass job losses since computers would now do all the work and they'd be out of a job. LED's are here to stay, we'll need to figure out how to use them to our advantage, some will be early adopters, others will fight it for years, change = progress.

seriously???? Shut the fuck up already. Let's see you morons hook up a 10 x 30 room and then brag about how great your fucking led is. Stop wasting people's time and money with BULLSHIT

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Somebody had Denver and the under.