uvb lights?

james76208

Member
so im currently employing two 50 uvb lights on top of my 1000w hps i friend of mine says there mandatory but i can hardly find any info backing this up anyone out there using them and can tell difference in potency:?:
 

Gastanker

Well-Known Member
[video=youtube;lfiI78uN3Ks]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfiI78uN3Ks[/video]

I love UV. Keeps the area more sanitary, ups trich count, and more potent bud imo.










I've noticed that it significantly increases the length of the trichs - in theory this would allow for a larger area to accommodate the heads of additional trichs.

 

polyarcturus

Well-Known Member
trust me worth the results i dont know about mandatory but its good stuff! the best light bulb on the market for flowering supplemental lighting is the T5HO Wave Point Coral Wave.
 

james76208

Member
lol thanks gastanker nice room but now my room seems inferior and do u just run the uvb lights on the same timer or something different
 

Gastanker

Well-Known Member
I run them on the same timer. I'll never hit anywhere near the levels of high altitude outdoors (naturally where you find the highest levels of THC) so I might as well run them as often as I can.
 

james76208

Member
ok i just finished that you tube video and i was sketchy at first but went into great info for not just my uvb questions but all around thanks again gastanker
 

Gastanker

Well-Known Member
np. glad i could help. that video is definitely a bit dated and the guy is pretty funky but most of the info is pretty on.
 

polyarcturus

Well-Known Member
cant rep you gastanker good shit leading him in the right direction! most people always telling you UV all day is bad but their dead wrong, most lights just dont have the output the sun has and puts out maybe a 1/10 the UV of a sunny day in new york
 

polyarcturus

Well-Known Member
check out the CORAL WAVE GASTANKER for real thats the new uva-uvb floering light plus lots of red spectrum an IR to help get those flowering hormones going early in the morning
 

Gastanker

Well-Known Member
I personally can't afford the coral waves - would rather replace my 10.0's twice as often. And I don't really see that they deliver UV... They are 420nm actinic which is 20nm away from UVA and 95nm off from UVB. The coral waves have a narrower spectrum but the 10.0s deliver both more PAR and higher levels of UV. I also personally prefer to suppliment my HPS with more 'blue light' versus boosting the 'red' that it's already high in.

Spoke too soon. According to this there is a tiny amount of UV as well as some usable blue.



I don't know...

As a planted tank enthusiast familiar with actinic coral bulbs... I just can't imagine ever using them. They are great for coral - which is not a plant and requires water penetrating frequencies, but they are terrible at growing plants compared to the standard bulbs. No planted tank forum would ever recommend actinics for growing plants and even coral forums just use them supplementally - for coral, not plants.
 

polyarcturus

Well-Known Member
now where talking PAR your HPS doesnt even put off that wavelength of red and those blues go low as you can see on the chart just becasuse the peak is at 420nm doesn't mean it doesn't put out other wave lengths. if you where to over lay this graph on an hps graph you would have an awesome spectrum to flower in!
 

polyarcturus

Well-Known Member
hps red peak is at 600-620 not even the most photosynthetically active region of a plants spectrum

anything below 400nm is considered UV, and on another chart somewhere forget where it shows the whole chart ther is another small spike in the 320?nm range. also i wouldnt toss out the old reptile bulbs i would just add these to the combo!
 

Gastanker

Well-Known Member
Yeah... aquarium forums don't fuck around with lumens and go straight to their quantum meters for PAR. Over and over generic T5s have shown to produce more PAR than narrow band T5s - the chemicals just don't fluoresce equally... My HPS puts out some of that red wavelength, likely more than the T5s, but it definitely isn't a high percentage of it's spectrum.

The UV compared to a 10.0 though is pretty pitiful.



Compared to a MV UV bulb both would be looking pretty pathetic. Of course the rest of MV spectrum is pretty pointless.
 

polyarcturus

Well-Known Member
yeah got to agree, im just out here trying new thing all the time i run reptisun 10.0 too was just thinking of adding a coral growth in the future, but i dont need currently. so im off to find a better bulb than the coral growth, what you are saying about the lumens is somwhat correct but standard t5 bulbs are not better then the aquarium one straight up. its a higher standard then just 3000k and 6500k. aquarium bulbs go thru water personally i think they are more powerful.
 

james76208

Member
i was lucky my girls has bearded dragons so she had these bigger uvb lights so threw em in to see if i can tell a difference seems like the 1000w is overpowering anything the lights are doing ive got em stuffed right down the middle
 
Top