FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

toroalbino wrote:

mokigarden wrote:http://www.ebay.com/itm/SunSpect-400W-L ... rkt%3D1%26

This one costs 70 dollars and puts out 31 times more light. Just think about that.

Would you recommend me the T5 for example?

1. What are you trying to grow?

2. How big of a space do you want to cover?


Those are the two main questions to determine which light to get


As an after thought, do you care about the color? I'm paying a lot more for my white light grow lights than I would if I opted for the purple/pink ones. That's because I want to display my plants. I also have the pink/purple ones, which I'd even wager the plants like more, but they look ugly to look at. I've tried every LED light you can imagine, starting way before I even grew plants, or even carnivorous plants. I did part of my undergrad research with and on LED's. You would be surprised how much misinformation there is about them right now.

mokigarden wrote:

toroalbino wrote:

mokigarden wrote:http://www.ebay.com/itm/SunSpect-400W-L ... rkt%3D1%26

This one costs 70 dollars and puts out 31 times more light. Just think about that.

Would you recommend me the T5 for example?

1. What are you trying to grow?

2. How big of a space do you want to cover?


Those are the two main questions to determine which light to get


As an after thought, do you care about the color? I'm paying a lot more for my white light grow lights than I would if I opted for the purple/pink ones. That's because I want to display my plants. I also have the pink/purple ones, which I'd even wager the plants like more, but they look ugly to look at. I've tried every LED light you can imagine, starting way before I even grew plants, or even carnivorous plants. I did part of my undergrad research with and on LED's. You would be surprised how much misinformation there is about them right now.

Hi, I just want to give my CP extra light from October because in England is dark from from 4:30 pm until 8:30 am and most days is cloudy. Space is small. One meter square ish no more than that. What light would you use? Thank you

mokigarden may I ask what LEDs YOU use? Do you have any recommendations to get the most lumens per watt?

toroalbino wrote:

mokigarden wrote:

toroalbino wrote:Would you recommend me the T5 for example?

1. What are you trying to grow?

2. How big of a space do you want to cover?


Those are the two main questions to determine which light to get


As an after thought, do you care about the color? I'm paying a lot more for my white light grow lights than I would if I opted for the purple/pink ones. That's because I want to display my plants. I also have the pink/purple ones, which I'd even wager the plants like more, but they look ugly to look at. I've tried every LED light you can imagine, starting way before I even grew plants, or even carnivorous plants. I did part of my undergrad research with and on LED's. You would be surprised how much misinformation there is about them right now.

Hi, I just want to give my CP extra light from October because in England is dark from from 4:30 pm until 8:30 am and most days is cloudy. Space is small. One meter square ish no more than that. What light would you use? Thank you

Since you're only using it as supplemental lighting it doensn't need to be as strong or as broad in spectrum. depending on which cp's you grow. Refer to this :

Genus/Species Lighting Requirement
Cephalotus intense light
Dionaea intense light
Drosera (most species) intense light
D. adelae
D. prolifera moderate light
D. schizandra low light

Genlisea moderate light
Heliamphora intense light
Nepenthes moderate light
Pinguicula moderate or intense light
Sarracenia intense light
Utricularia moderate light

Intense light usually means full sun which is the 25K to 100k lux range, although you can go below 25 down to 10-15K and have healthy plants. This is approximately a 75-100W LED light, for a 1 square meter area, if you only wanted to use the light, as a supplemental you can dip well below that to 40-60W and be perfectly fine. For moderate lighting 30-40W should work as supplemental lighting.

When trying to find the right light to buy, make sure the LED's are surface mounted and the individual LED's are no smaller than 1W. When trying to figure out the wattage of the single LEDs if not listed divide the wattage by the number of LED's you see. 3W diodes are good and 5W is great but you wont find the 5w in the smaller lights. 1W and 3W are what you should look for, they will perform the same.

Typicall you would want something with a lot of bands (light wavelengths/colors) if you were only growing with lights, but as a supplemental light any red/blue focused light will work.

The tube LED lights aren't as efficient as the directional ones for growing plants.

Leathal_Traps wrote:mokigarden may I ask what LEDs YOU use? Do you have any recommendations to get the most lumens per watt?

I have 7 Lights currently of 5 varieties. 150W marshydro 3W, 90W blackstar (9 bands mainly white/red/a little blue) 1W, 2x 135W blackstar (6 bands, mainly blue red), 1x 180W freshwater aquarium light (this was mainly an experiment, blues are too strong on this one). 2 x 180W 9 band mostly white/red, which are my main ones that cover most of the sundews.

It really depends on your application. Like I mentioned earlier the white/red ones i purchased cost more per lumen than most regular lights, but the flipside is that my room isn't pink.