FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Hi to you all!

I recently received a VFT as a gift from my girlfriend, the first thing i did was to google how to take care of it.. That was approx 4 weeks ago and now im HOOKED on it!

im starting by telling how long i''ve come so far:

when i received the plant it had 21 traps, so i repotted/splitted it into a large plastic box (approx 6cm acid peat.) the smaller plant (2traps, 2 soon traps) did NOT like getting moved, neither did the bigger one. but theyre getting better and better each day now!, im giving them a moist envoirment (plastic bag over box, 23degrees celsius (little above room temp) and small amount of spraying 1-2times a day). only using melted snow as water, and feeding the bigger plant 1x1/4 trap size spider every 2-3days. currently things are going well, but im rather nervous about the dormancy, i will need to re-pot all plants into smaller pots ones in order to fit them into the fridge, will they fully recover untill then?

and since the summers here in sweden are so unstable im thinking of making a backup plan to use on days when the sun don't shine. I'm an electrician with good engineering skills so making the "stand" for the Leds wont be and issue, its rather the NM/wattage oh the leds im worried about. right now i want 100% vegetive growth, no flowers! i tried to find info about it, but couldn't find anything usefull. so now im asking you guys about it.



what im looking for;

100% growth, no flowers
heat, currently room temp varies between 20-22 celsius (68-72fahrenheit) and the optimal temp is like 25celsius? (approx 77 fahrenheit)
it has to be CHEAP. ( cheap > performance ) im a student. im very familiar with ebay, so that is an option.

If you have any questions ( or if i''ve been not very clear ) dont mind asking me about it!

thanks for reading, and if you can help me, please do!

PS the red dots in my blueprints are supposed to be LEDs, im not sure what type to choose yet so i didnt put any effort into fixing them!

Hey mate,

Im going to build my own grow light as well, i ordered the materials about 3 weeks ago, also from ebay.
Since all the pre-build led grow light are geared towards marijuana and therefore flowering, i wanted more vegetative growth.
So after a lot of research, this are my conclusions:

Purple, and blue leds (lower wavelengths, ~400-450nm) are mainly used for vegetative growth, as higher wavelengths (~650-730 nm) promote flowering.

Another pointer when looking for these kinds of leds, do not ever look at lux rating, http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/build ... 18491.html somewhere on that page is a graph which explains, lux rating is how humans see light but since there not as sensitive to purple and red.

As for power, i went for 1w leds, so its easier to get a 5 band with more options between different amount of leds etc, and i could find all the leds that i wanted(except 730nm which are 8$ each for 1 piece 1w)

My panel will be about 40 watts, and it will cost me about 40 euros including shipment (did not calculate solder or wiring yet and using an aluminium sheet as heatsink).

I cannot profess to be an expert of LED light, but I can tell you of my experience with them:

I have only one VFT growing under LED as of now, but it is doing EXTREMELY well. It is actually planted inside a 1gallon pickle jar. Attached to the lid, is a fixture for an LED light (E27 screw in variety) I have in the socket an 8W LED that I bought from the hardware store in the 5000K color range (6500 is optimal).

From this, I can conclude, that 8W of LED power/ VFT is sufficient. I am in the process of trying to find out if there is a benefit to different "grow" LED lights. This will be done with the comparison of equal wattage fixtures, one with all white LEDs, and one with mixtures of spectra bands.

All of this will be written up in a lab report style document after I am done doing it. But until then, go to eBay, search for whatever wattage you need to support your plant needs (8W/plant seems to be fine.) and go ahead and buy the cheapest possible light that has that wattage.

Projects are always exciting to prepare and build. Based on my years of growing plants in general, I noticed that LED lights (dual/tri/quad band and so on) are built for specific reasons. Some for vegatative and most are flowering. I tried all the light bands on VFTs and the most successful is still the full spectrum light band. I noticed that plants that needs dormancy greatly benefits from all of the light spectrum. So far, 1 watt LED has the closes nm to full spectrum and they are also cheaper now if you want to assemble your own.

cheers,

hb

Sander wrote:Hey mate,

Im going to build my own grow light as well, i ordered the materials about 3 weeks ago, also from ebay.
Since all the pre-build led grow light are geared towards marijuana and therefore flowering, i wanted more vegetative growth.
So after a lot of research, this are my conclusions:

Purple, and blue leds (lower wavelengths, ~400-450nm) are mainly used for vegetative growth, as higher wavelengths (~650-730 nm) promote flowering.

Another pointer when looking for these kinds of leds, do not ever look at lux rating, http://www.flytrapcare.com/phpBB3/build ... 18491.html somewhere on that page is a graph which explains, lux rating is how humans see light but since there not as sensitive to purple and red.

As for power, i went for 1w leds, so its easier to get a 5 band with more options between different amount of leds etc, and i could find all the leds that i wanted(except 730nm which are 8$ each for 1 piece 1w)

My panel will be about 40 watts, and it will cost me about 40 euros including shipment (did not calculate solder or wiring yet and using an aluminium sheet as heatsink).

i also recently orded 10 pieces of 1W 450nm for about 2.5 dollars from ebay (incl shipment), a great deal! that's going to be my starter kit. there's a store nearby which got really cheap alu, about 2 bucks for a 40x40 cm piece!

well, its good to start and experiment.

Let us know how it goes

all done! the lights are 450nM. im gonna build a shelf with 3-4 racks where i can place more plants!

do you think 10x1W leds will help the plants?

Im guessting they do, but just try them for a month and make before and after pictures, but looks good!