NorthernLeitz FB-400-5 Watt LED + 300 Apollo LED VS Philips 600 CMH Showdown

The Hardware Lineup:

Vegetative Stage
NorthernLeitz Veggie Bomb 240 (Ebay)
HTG LED Veg light - 240 rated Generic Chinese profile (Ebay)
- These both pull about 160/170 watts each

Homemade LED Side lighting consisting of .2-.3 watt diodes (about 350-400 watts worth running on both sides in various stages)
Over 8 years old and hardly a failure with only passive cooling


Flowering
LED Side
400 watt NorthernLeitz Flower Bomb 400-5 LED with 80 5 watt diodes (From Ebay)
300 watt NorthernLeitz LED with 100 3 watt diodes and Apollo style secondary lensing (Ebay)
- 460 watts actual draw

HPS Side Chinese Digital ballast with Cooltube (HTG I recall) Running a Philips 600 watt CMH bulb
- 690 watts actual draw

Ventilation
2 - 4" American Aldes inline fans (The Best)
1 - 3" squirrel cage (from the Goodwill)


Strains:
1 - Ministry of Cannabis Northern Lights Feminized

1 - Feminised Seeds Company Easy Kush -
AUTOFLOWER - Wish this did not come up on Attitudes search function when you specify medium height photoperiod but more on that later.

8-10 - G13 Labs G13xKush ----> Housemade Feminized cross with Unknown variety I called The Happy.
Mild but perma-grin stuff no couch-lock. Specimens culled down to fit 4 spots



Setup:
8x8' space with 6.5' of headroom. No effort was put into separating light sources outside of positioning. I simply do not believe in wasting any light, even for science ! Top 1.5' of each side got no spillover. Lower halves of plants got love from the other side.

Soil ProMix Mycorrhiza from The Low Depot. Pure Blend for Veg and Flower. Some Cal/Mag and Liquid Karma but PM doesn't need anything. Best soil I have ever used.
Starts under CFL and moved to LED after all sprouted. 6 total pot transplants.


If I forget any relevant spec let me know and I will post it.

Early Vegetative stage
Day 10 Approximately

Day 22 or so

NL on Left --- HTG on Right




Day 35

View attachment 2801256View attachment 2801257

Dirt is Sooooo Slow !

I seem to have lost these due to a drive failure. Just more boring Veg pics yawn...


I did discover that the Easy Kush was and Autoflower unit. Pulled a G-Happy unit out of the compost pile and replaced it.

I am not a huge fan of Autoflower but it was decent smoke. Finished it off under a dual burner Apollo NL120.
Might have faired better with a bit less distance but this became a neglected child hah !




Still got a solid half OZ or so...

LED Side



CMH Side

Not going to label individual pics from here on out.
The ones that look like they are on the moon are LED (Left)
The right side is CMH

Swifty here decided to position the LEDs up on the ceiling. In the process he manged to break off about 6 of the top stems.

Did a graft:


Bummer still lost the top 4 but saved a few. I will conservatively add 10% to the total yield for this plant when this saga ends.



Guess we will call this advantage to the HPS for ease of raising. Don't try this at home kids. Always use 2 hands.

Both sides looking good. Largest buds on the CMH but only the 3 that are close to the cool-tube. LED side is winning in total volume with superior penetration.

More stretch than i expected with the LED's. May be hard to tell but flower development is pretty solid well down into most of the plant. The CMH is only getting good development on the upper third of the plant.
Slightly more open pattern on the LED side and the NL more so with the apical stem having been broken off.





Temps would be 5˚ cooler without the CMH I'm sure. Cooltubes are nice but they only do so much with only a 4" fan.

Probably another week or so to go. Glands are still as white as an Oregonian !

I will attempt to improve my Harbor Freight $3 magnifying lens technique. You get the drift. Both sides are getting gooey at day 50.

Just going yellow ---> Amber.

Snip Snip will be soon.





Will post some post harvest pics soon.

.

The CMH side has been shut down to make cooler temps for the dry. Moved the G-Happy over under the FB 400-5 as the Northern Lights will go back into veg for the next test. Heres the actual power draw of a FB400-5

Here's some macro pics.