FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi all!

I'm having trouble with finding good lights at good price.. I was searching on e-bay and I found this LED lights, and I want to ask your opinion. Are they good for nice coloring and growing of my plants?

This one is for individual:
http://viewitem.eim.ebay.pt/4PCS-E27-38 ... 26184/item

And this one is a panel:
http://viewitem.eim.ebay.pt/LED-Plant-G ... 52571/item

Can you give me your opinion?

Thanks!

Hi Alex,

I would suggest a Full spectrum or quad band if you like to grow CPs under artificial light. The second one will work on tropicals.

hb

I have more interest in VFT and they grow outdoors, but since I have a terrarium I want to grow some plants in there.. Like cephalotus and droseras. I already have a light setup, but I'm having trouble with giving to the plants a good colour, so I found those LED lights and they were cheap, so cheap that I liked to ask if they are good or it's money thrown away.. lol

What do you mean with "tropicals", hackerberry?

I guess Cephs will thrive on those LED lights. Tropicals like Nepenthes species.

hb

I doubt either of those light will work for an extended period of time. The first one you posted is a total of 1.9 watts. That's not a lot of power. I am currently growing one single VFT under white LED, and I am using an 8W bulb. Now while I can't say it won't work for sure, my gut tells me that 1.9 watts is not going to be enough. Even for LEDs.
LEDs are much more efficient than CFLs or HPS, but wattage is still important. A vast majority of the decent LED grow lights are made using diodes that are >1W per LED.
The second light you posted is a pannel that has 225 LEDs in it, but the total power usage is 15Watts... I'll let you do the math on that one, but I can say with confidence that it is much less than 1W per LED. All I can conclude from my studies thus far is that 8W/plant seems to be sufficient. I will update what I know as I learn more. If you want to find better lights on ebay, use keywords like "1W" or "3W" Expect to pay about $1 per Watt. best of luck man! Let us know what works for you. LEDs are mostly uncharted territory, so we need to spread the information around to build a base of knowledge that others can use to keep making progress. (that's science baby!)

Thanks for the enlightening comment, nimrod337

Just one thing that I want to clarify, are you telling me that I just need to find bulbs that have a watage of 3W per LED? Cold white, right? I'm new at using LEDs too, so I'm expecting assimilate every information I can!

LEDs are the actual diodes that are being used to create the light. They come in a variety of wattages. Technically, the wattage of each individual LED isn't as important as the overal power usage. So the lights that you posted were low wattage lights because they used lots of low wattage LEDs. To get a higher wattage lamp overall, you need to either use 1 million weak LEDs (exaggeration for effect), or several higher wattage LEDs.

LEDs come in several "standard" wattages
5mm
7mm
1W
3W
(5-10W) - These are getting more popular, but as far as I know are still less popular than the 1 or 3W varieties.

And from what I've read (so do not take this as gospel, because it's already second hand to me.) is that the higher the wattage of the individual LEDs, the lower the efficiency. So the 1W are more efficient (more of each unit of energy translates into usable light.)
so for example: take a 50W fixture; you can make it several ways
- 50 x 1W LEDs
- 16 X 3W LEDs (ok, 50 isn't divisible by 3, so I'm rounding)
- 10 x 5W LEDs
- 5 x 10W LEDs

The 50 x 1W LEDs would theoretically give off more light. (I say "theoretically, because I have obviously not tested this, or even seen it proven in paper.)

The other argument is that the higher wattage LEDs, while being less efficient, have higher starting energy, and thus the light is able to penetrate further into the canopy of the plants you are growing. This is less of a problem with VFTs, as they are not very dense, and tend to just have one upper surface, just wanted to make you aware of it.
Again, I do not have any proof of this claim, nor enough particle physics knowledge to confirm or deny it.

So getting back to your question, yes, I do believe you should look for grow lights that use either 1W or 3W LEDs to generate light. They are readily available, and seemingly cheap from China.

As far as color, the verdict is still out on that, but the claim is that a combination of red660 and blue450 lights can work more efficiently at growing plants because there is less wasted light. However, I have not tested this, and can only confirm that the 8W "cool white" LED bulb in the 5000K light spectrum works at growing my VFT.

tl;dr - Fixtures using 1W or 3W should be fine. Total wattage is more important than individual LED wattage, and White works, but multi-band (Red and blue + extras) is "allegedly" more efficient.

As nimrod explained, yes, smaller leds are more efficient, so more light per wattage, but i would try to avoid the <1w leds because they diffuse really fast in just air, u have to place them really close to the plants.

Im currently in the process of building my own 5-band led grow light from 1w leds (420nm, 630nm, both near chlorophyll a absorption peaks, 450 and 660nm near chlorophyll b absorption peaks) and 6500k leds as a supplement.

Purely theoretically (can only test when the panel is done), the PAR radiation is what u want because if can be way more efficient for plants since it is absorbed better (the darker the plant looks under the same wattage the better).

And another reason for using 1w leds over 5 or 10w ones: u can have a broader more variable spectrum of the leds, and therefore make it more effecient.

Edit: i also have a pre-build 5mm led light that is 3,8 watt, and it was sufficient for 3 aliciae in the same pot when about 2 inches away, they really liked it.