LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

I'm about to ask a lot of questions. Please bear with me.

I'll start with lights. Forgive me if the answers are already in this thread somewhere. I was out today, and I went to some stores to see what's available locally. I happened to come across some bulbs at a local aquarium store; coralife. The output spectrums were right on the boxes. They are also on this website.

http://coralifeproducts.com/product/lamps/

I thought that the super actinic was a no brainer as far as blue light is concerned, so I bought one.

Before:
IMAG0353.jpg

After:
IMAG0356.jpgIMAG0358.jpg

So I looked at a few places in person and online and have the following questions about specific bulbs;

Would the coralife colormax, linked to above, be a substitute for the Fiji purple? It has an unfortunate green spike, I know, but it seems evenly balanced.

How about the ATI Purple Plus in place of a Fiji purple? Looks like it has more blue than red to me though.

Do all the 50/50 red blue lights have a green spike somewhere? It's not bad to have a little green in your spectrum right?

It seems like the red bulbs are hard to find. Is there anything out there other than the red sun?

Also, you guys are mostly using 8 bulb fixtures. I am not starting with that much light in my room. What kind of watts/sq ft are you guys running? I know it's all about PAR, but I would like some kind of metric I can compare against. My thought is; if I have a good spectrum, like you guys, and I have a good quantity of PAR, my results will be the same. I wish there were a better way to quantify what we are doing. I currently am running 24w/sq ft. It would be ridiculously low according to conventional wisdom. Needless to say, I want to prove conventional wisdom wrong.

I appreciate anyone's input while I wait for my order to come.
 
AssDan said:
I'm about to ask a lot of questions. Please bear with me.

I'll start with lights. Forgive me if the answers are already in this thread somewhere. I was out today, and I went to some stores to see what's available locally. I happened to come across some bulbs at a local aquarium store; coralife. The output spectrums were right on the boxes. They are also on this website.

http://coralifeproducts.com/product/lamps/




I thought that the super actinic was a no brainer as far as blue light is concerned, so I bought one.

Before:
View attachment 1897900

After:
View attachment 1897907View attachment 1897906

So I looked at a few places in person and online and have the following questions about specific bulbs;

Would the coralife colormax, linked to above, be a substitute for the Fiji purple? It has an unfortunate green spike, I know, but it seems evenly balanced.

How about the ATI Purple Plus in place of a Fiji purple? Looks like it has more blue than red to me though.

Do all the 50/50 red blue lights have a green spike somewhere? It's not bad to have a little green in your spectrum right?

It seems like the red bulbs are hard to find. Is there anything out there other than the red sun?

Also, you guys are mostly using 8 bulb fixtures. I am not starting with that much light in my room. What kind of watts/sq ft are you guys running? I know it's all about PAR, but I would like some kind of metric I can compare against. My thought is; if I have a good spectrum, like you guys, and I have a good quantity of PAR, my results will be the same. I wish there were a better way to quantify what we are doing. I currently am running 24w/sq ft. It would be ridiculously low according to conventional wisdom. Needless to say, I want to prove conventional wisdom wrong.

I appreciate anyone's input while I wait for my order to come.
Click to expand...

First id like to say that i commend you for at least knowing what your trying to do. and seeking help instead of screwing it up first and asking questions later.
2nd you need more than 2 lamps for this to work i sugest getting another 2bulb fixture.
i dont reccomend any bulb other than the ones I am already using/recommended here.
red suns are the only pure red bulbs i know of...that are available anyways. I suggest using the coral wave if you can't get the fiji purps. you already have what looks like a standard cool white that will have enough green in it to suffice.
 
AltarNation said:
New pics coming in a few minutes guys.

Pr0f, I think I speak for the whole "club" when I say, we owe ya! Thank you once again for introducing these concepts!!
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Indeed i think we should still petition for our own category... were not CFL or HID so why confuse others when we shoud have a T5 category.. this thread proves that we as a community really do need one.
 
Yeah, Stomata! Those are fucking beautiful! What re we looking at, three separate containers? Two in the front one in the back? How big is each container?
 
pr0fesseur said:
First id like to say that i commend you for at least knowing what your trying to do. and seeking help instead of screwing it up first and asking questions later.
2nd you need more than 2 lamps for this to work i sugest getting another 2bulb fixture.
i dont reccomend any bulb other than the ones I am already using/recommended here.
red suns are the only pure red bulbs i know of...that are available anyways. I suggest using the coral wave if you can't get the fiji purps. you already have what looks like a standard cool white that will have enough green in it to suffice.
Click to expand...

I've also got 4 2' HO T5s hanging over my plants in addition to the 2 bulb 4' fixture in the picture. I have 7 bulbs on order from aquarium specialty including red suns, fijis, 454, and 75.25. Mursh and the other regulars here thought I made myself a decent spectrum when I laid it out earlier in this thread. I'm trying, in the meantime, to upgrade my light spectrum before my order arrives and so I could have some emergency spares. I have 206 watts in a 9 sq ft space. Do you think that would be enough?

Thanks again for your help.
 
AssDan said:
I've also got 4 2' HO T5s hanging over my plants in addition to the 2 bulb 4' fixture in the picture. I have 7 bulbs on order from aquarium specialty including red suns, fijis, 454, and 75.25. Mursh and the other regulars here thought I made myself a decent spectrum when I laid it out earlier in this thread. I'm trying, in the meantime, to upgrade my light spectrum before my order arrives and so I could have some emergency spares. I have 206 watts in a 9 sq ft space. Do you think that would be enough?

Thanks again for your help.
Click to expand...

Sounds pretty good man... I'd say that it will work, but it also couldn't hurt to drop one more two-bulb fixture in for a little extra wattage. For reference, I basically have 430w in a 4x3.5'ish space.

The bulbs you're getting are good choices. You said you have a blue actinic already... I'd say that line up will go nicely with it. (pretty much what i'm using in fact.)
 
Hey guys i only joined the forum because of this thread. First of all i apologies for my english. Im from germany and its only school english but i think i can express myself on a way ull understand...i hope so :)
I want to thank u all for this great Thread cause like in ur forums here in our german ones coloured fl. bulbs have no big community :(....Originally i wanted to do DIY Led with Chinese Leds but it doesnt seem theyre are pretty well and im not that good in electricity....and the diods u need for good results are pretty expensive....expensive for me as a student :)....so next option was a t5 scrog wich was meanwhile putes aside but i didnt forget it completely....and so ive found this thread. At the beginning i wanted to do a 10x21 He scrog with t5 but now i want to add a bit of colours especially fuji purple (flower, veg) blue (veg) and red (flower)....the problem i met is there is no really good red bulb (660nm) so maybe i add this with some Osram 660nm Leds but i prefer using a t5 bulb any idea? And then i want to give advise in form of another supllier called narwa. I think its a german one and they have preety good bulbs also coloured ones....the big plus is they have colored HE Bulbs too whereas these aquaristic bulbs are only available in HO wich is ok but for me and my little room/grow i prefer He bulbs for maximal efficiency...the blue bulb is pretty good in my opinion :) (i like that narwas product informations are more or less complete)

http://www.narva-bel.de/ressourcen/datenblaetter/QD17121T5.07_LT-T5_COLOUR_mix.pdf

i want to use the blue one i think its a good bulb. It has 500lm in approx. 98" blue spectrum....what do u think can i use this?

Otherwise i dont like the red one...its to much orange although so far i didnt see another bulb wich is far better? Can u help me there is it a good bloom light perhaps in combination with 2000k and 660nm?
So sorry for this bad english i hope u understand my concern :)

Oh i have another question...Osram and Phillips both sell coloured bulbs but i didnt find any spectrum sheets wich is important to me....Is it expensive to measure it urself or mybe impossible (realllly expensive?)

I red through all these pages (promise) and i hope u dont get the feeling im one of these people wich ask quations answered one page before or ahead :)...im serious about this for a long time bu i live at my mums place. Until i live in my own home ill do outside (this year the police stole all my equip and more or less all my plants :finger::finger::finger::finger:) :(....i want to do outdoors its alot of fun and good for mother nature (mother nature produces really potent stuff :lol:) but i want to to some strains wich are impossible to grow at this latitudes and im a litlle scientist :) and i love PLANTS :)
ok enough of brabbling good night all :)
 
Hey cifer, welcome man. It's true the red suns lean a little farther left of the desired red range, but there are no alternatives outside of LED right now. That seems to be the consensus anyway. Pr0f has an ATI bulb that provided a better red spectrum, but it has been discontinued as far as I know, so we are temporarily at a stand still on providing that range. LED supplementation is probably the only option until some new bulbs get produced.

What is the difference between HE and HO? never heard of HE bulbs.
 
Wow this was a fast answer :)...im really glad :)....HE means high efficiency (longer bulbs lesser wattage...some are over 100 L/w i think)...cannot sleep :)
 
cifer said:
Wow this was a fast answer :)...im really glad :)....HE means high efficiency (longer bulbs lesser wattage...some are over 100 L/w i think)...cannot sleep :)
Click to expand...

Haha, yes. I am a forum camper! And the answers come quick because, as you said, some of it has been addressed earlier in the thread. But no one is going to blame you for not going through 100+ pages before posting, lol. It's easier at this point to ask again than to find anything in this thread! haha.

Cool... HO is High Output right? So do you sacrifice some lumens for the longer life? Oh, I see, you said it's lesser wattage... how much less do you get out of it? I think my 4' HO bulbs are 54 watts each.

Also, what is L/w?
 
Im a camper too :)

for example 21w He has a length of 849mm, same as 39w HO...my future growroom should has something like 95x65x130...and i want to use 2 FUji Purple 39w HO; 2 Narwa blue 21w HE; 2 865 21w He in veg....flower: 2 Fuji Purple; 1 of the blue and far red/IF (forgot the name :(); 2 Narwa red 21w He; 2 Narwa 820; 20x3w 660nm Led....appro. 240w Lightpower wich is alot....maybe i get one of the 39w lights out for the sake of my electricity bill :)

l/w means lumen/watt

greetz
 
Josh1r said:
I just found this site advertising a new "State of the art" lighting system! Hah check it out im pretty impressed.. http://www.cyberbiota.com/index.html ps. This isn't me advertising the guy lol, just thought it was cool.
Click to expand...

In addition to the benefits of solid state lighting (dramatically reduced energy use, exact spectral wavelengths matched to the absorption maxima of chlorophyll a and b, no UV, no IR, our lights are straight DC so there is no flicker that disturbs the chloroplast orientation, and no heat directed at the plants, so less water is lost through transpiration) you can control the wavelengths individually to promote foliar growth or to induce budding. We now have a large database of the optimal timing of light, spectral composition for each stage of growth, and it is all controlled via microprocessor in the power distribution box, and modifiable by a user interface that runs on your linux/wintel/mac/iPhone/Android. Call or email if you have questions or wish to be a beta tester. http//www.cyberbiota.com

Never buy photons you don't need, and your crops cant use!

Peter C, Charles, PhD
Director of Research and Technology
Advanced Photobiology Laboratory
CyberBiota, INC
http//www.cyberbiota.com
 
cyberbiota said:
In addition to the benefits of solid state lighting (dramatically reduced energy use, exact spectral wavelengths matched to the absorption maxima of chlorophyll a and b, no UV, no IR, our lights are straight DC so there is no flicker that disturbs the chloroplast orientation, and no heat directed at the plants, so less water is lost through transpiration) you can control the wavelengths individually to promote foliar growth or to induce budding. We now have a large database of the optimal timing of light, spectral composition for each stage of growth, and it is all controlled via microprocessor in the power distribution box, and modifiable by a user interface that runs on your linux/wintel/mac/iPhone/Android. Call or email if you have questions or wish to be a beta tester. http//www.cyberbiota.com

Never buy photons you don't need, and your crops cant use!

Peter C, Charles, PhD
Director of Research and Technology
Advanced Photobiology Laboratory
CyberBiota, INC
http//www.cyberbiota.com
Click to expand...

I'd kill to be a beta tester. This sounds AMAZING. I would love to do a test and write a complete journal here on RIU about it. Please let me know if you're interested.
 
Not to make a big deal, but you guys could probably take this to private messages. I mean this doesn't seem to be new technology... it's LEDs... (no offense to the manufacturers or the representative) and this isn't even an LED thread. (I know the title is misleading.)
 
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