Led strip help

Juds4420

Member
Im new to growing. I just had my first harvest from seed grow and im officially hooked. I did like many and bought a cheap chinese led from amazon and now realize its not nearly enough for my 4x4 tent. I know that many of the qb's have uv ir and different far red wavelengths but i want to do a strip light for better coverage for my scrog grow. Are there any strips that offer 3000k with the uv ir or what are my best options? Thanks in advance
 

LEDTonic - Daniel

Active Member
UV diodes usually wear out much quicker than regular white diodes. I forget the exact estimates but I think it's somewhere around 10.000 hours for UV whereas even poorly made LED grow lights will last about 5 times that long. Some brands even pay so little attention to hardware design that if a single diode burns out in a series, the rest of the series (or even the entire board) will stop working.

I think both UV and IR are something you should add on once you're more experienced, let's say after 5 or so grows. This is definitely not your limiting factor when it comes to yield. The duration of UV and IR exposure is tricky to master and it's not as easy as leaving the lights on for 12 or 18 hours a day. Most experienced growers who dabble with IR use it primarily as a "sun down"-tool, i.e. they let the IR lights run only 30-60 minutes before the main lights turn off.

For new growers, it makes more sense to fully master watering, humidity, nutrients, light setup (regular light, not UV and IR), training, trimming, topping. Once you know this like the back of your hand, then expand to advance grow strategies like working with UV and IR.

I'm a bit biased but instead of focusing on UV and IR, I would focus on finding a light that properly fills your tent with the right light intensity, or PPFD, which is a more technical term for light intensity. I suggest you read a bit about PPFD to understand why it's important and what PPFD levels your plants want throughout their stages (seedling, veg, flowering).

We have an article about PPFD but feel free to look around elsewhere, too.
In short, PPFD is a measurement of light intensity in a numerical value, 0-2000. Mature cannabis plant grow well when subjected to around 600-900 PPFD. Seedlings and early veg will, however, only want around 200 PPFD.
As light falls and spreads from your grow light, the light intensity will vary depending on where you measure it. Right underneath the grow light, in the center spot, the intensity will usually be plenty high but the farther way from the center PPFD is measured, the lower it will be. The key is to find a grow light that adequately fills your grow area (4x4') with high enough light intensity, or PPFD. It seems you already figured out that a small/low-power lamp will only fill a small space with enough light.

I'd further like to suggest that you understand how PPFD maps work, which we discuss here:
PPFD maps and how to find the right LED grow light

PPFD maps are PPFD measurements over a specific area, let's say 4x4'. PPFD values are measured in various spots over said area and then it's clearly visible how effectively a certain lamp fills said area with light. If you find a PPFD map that shows, let's say, 100 PPFD in the outer edges of a 4x4' area then said light would do a poor job of filling the 4x4' space with enough light for your plants as the plants will want higher intensity, around 600 PPFD. The more of our plants surface area that gets high light intensity, the better growth potential you have.

While I understand that you asked for LED strip suggestions, I'd like to throw our LEDTonic Q7 QB lamp into the mix for you to consider. This lamp has two panels instead of one so you get much better light coverage than from a single panel QB with the same draw power (watts).
More information about the Q7 and its PPFD maps showing its light coverage can be found here:

Hope this helps!
 
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