FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

So typically I only paid attention to the K rating and lumen output, but recently I was told the wattage needs to be high as well. I figured it wouldn’t matter since most LEDs claim to be efficient and use less watts, although I’m not sure how much that reduces the light output if the lumens still claim to be reasonable.

I checked MarsHydro LEDs and it looks like the lower end is 300w, while the strongest LED lights I could find at the hardware store were running about 100w at most with the majority being on average ~40w. Given a situation where the K and Lumens are the same, how much better would a 300w light be that the 100w light (or 30w light)?

Wattage is a poor way to compare lights because the electrical efficiency of different products can vary greatly, and because the advertised wattage is often the maximum rated power of the LEDs in the fixture or an equivalency rating compared to an HPS fixture of that wattage, and not the actual power usage. For instance the "300W" Mars Hydro fixtures that are so popular only use about 128W.

I'd recommend just using lumens, but lumens can't be used to measure the output of blurple LEDs since the unit is weighted towards human vision and will give misleadingly low values for blurple lights. PPF is the unit used for raw light output, but few manufacturers provide this and meters capable of measuring it are rather expensive. Personally I just stay away from blurple lights since they give me a headache.

I am a fan of those blurple lights since I like how bizarre it looks but so far I am only buying the regular looking spectrum ones anyways. . I heard the marshydro is geared towards pot growers and a better spectrum for flower production anyways while ideal lights for vegetative growth would be more in the cool spectrum. As long as I can find high lumen daylight LED I don’t have a huge desire to go specifically with the purple lights knowing they aren’t optimal anyways.

Yeah I also have read that the wattage can be lower since LEDs vary in efficiency but wasn’t sure if the stronger wattage would be more efficient anyways. I probably going to just keep going with the lumen number.

The wattage of the fixture has little bearing on efficiency, unlike other types of lights like HPS. Higher wattage power supplies can be more efficient but depends on the exact parts used, and it's a more complex issue with the diodes. Also you can just ignore all the "bloom" and "veg" spectrum stuff, as it has no bearing on CPs.

The lights in this photo are $20 units from Amazon, they're sold as 22w and they're blue and white LED, my plants do just fine under them. I'm ordering some more and this time I'm getting all white units to offset some of the blue to the human eye.

CP shelves Pygmy Drosera grown exclusively under these lights. Nepenthes turning red under LED, had to move them back under t8 to stop burning.

It all depends because some Cree led bulbs have an astonishing 300 lumens/per watt that means a 5 watt bulb would be putting out 1500 lumens. That's a lot, but I would bet they are pretty pricey. The normal daylight led bulbs in your normal hardware store are probably around 100-120 lumens per watt. As long as you get atleast a 1500 or 1600 lumen daylight bulb I don't think you need to get a 300 watt equivalent led. Although that 300 watt equivalent really only generates 120 watts it must be producing about 10,000 lumens. So actually it might be better to go that route because you would need like 6 daylight bulbs at 1600 lumens to equal one 300 watt equivalent. IDK man it really depends on how many plants your trying to grow because I would think the 1600 lumen bulbs would be better in number so you can have stronger intensity above each plant rather than having one 300 watt equivalent bulb in the center providing light to several plants. I could be wrong , but I would think a couple plants under 1600 lumens is better than several plants under 10,000 lumens. Also distance makes a huge factor. Both setups would work fine , but the direct light above the plant would more likely succeed more. That looks like a good experiment to test.

Actually I want to clarify something OK so the 300w Mars hydro produces 5,800 lumens or close to it. Those blurple lights only have a lumen of about 45 to 1 watt. Whereas the normal household daylights are easily double the lumens per watt than those so you can see why I chose to go crazy on my setup and use a bunch of single bulbs.

Jeeper wrote:The lights in this photo are $20 units from Amazon, they're sold as 22w and they're blue and white LED

Do you have a link I could only find one for $30

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Doublebass1985 wrote: So actually it might be better to go that route because you would need like 6 daylight bulbs at 1600 lumens to equal one 300 watt equivalent. IDK man it really depends on how many plants your trying to grow because I would think the 1600 lumen bulbs would be better in number so you can have stronger intensity above each plant rather than having one 300 watt equivalent bulb in the center providing light to several plants.

Well I mix and add lights trying to get as much as possible. These days I am a fan of the LED 2 or 3 foot shop lights since they are 3000 lumens each (I have three of these over my flytraps currently). It's just a 1.5 foot x 2.5 foot box in the garage used temporarily for spring. I do have to swap out the old florescent 4 foot shop lights for my sundews eventually though.


Also at the store:
Large LED bulb = 10,000 lumens 100W
Smaller LED bulb = 4000 lumens 38 W
LED T8 = 2100 lumens 32W
LED T5 = 2600 lumen 40 watts
LED strip = 4562 lumen 43 watt (but its 4000K range)
LED strip = 3000 lumen 30 watt (but its 4000K range)

Doublebass1985 wrote:Actually I want to clarify something OK so the 300w Mars hydro produces 5,800 lumens or close to it. Those blurple lights only have a lumen of about 45 to 1 watt. Whereas the normal household daylights are easily double the lumens per watt than those so you can see why I chose to go crazy on my setup and use a bunch of single bulbs.

This is because the lumen is a unit used to measure perceived brightness to the human eye, not total energy output. Lumens are strongly weighted towards green wavelengths, since the human eye is more sensitive to green, and these blurple fixtures produce little to no green. You should never use lumens with blurple lights. PPF is the unit used for raw, unweighted light output, but few manufacturers provide this information.

Another thing I should note is that lumens are not what's important. Lumens are simply a measurement of the output of the light source. Lux (lumens per square meter) is what you should pay attention to as it is a measurement of the light intensity being received in a given area. This depends both on the intensity of the light source and how the light is cast/distributed, and you can pretty easily calculate an approximate average based on your setup and the specifications of your lights. The raw light equivalent of lux is PPFD.

Ya basically to roughly figure out your par with led bulbs is to divide the total lumens by 50 and that will give you a ballpark estimate of your par rating the plants receive. As well as lumens are important though because the more lumens the higher the par rating.

Doublebass1985 wrote:Ya basically to roughly figure out your par with led bulbs is to divide the total lumens by 50 and that will give you a ballpark estimate of your par rating the plants receive. As well as lumens are important though because the more lumens the higher the par rating.

The conversion factor should be about 75 for artificial light sources, and 54 for sunlight. This still only gives you the light's output. The light the plants receive depends on your setup - how far the lights are from the plants, how focused the light is and the area the light is cast on.

Yes there are many variables at play. I would say the most important thing about artificial lighting is having the bulb angle beam centered at the plant.

Update for the list: I went to another Home Depot location and they had a 2 ft LED - (171 W, 5000K, 18,000 lumens) - $100. I forgot to see how many LED "tubes" were in that, but it seems like a decent option.

blah, blah, blah, probably not going to get it but I'm using this thread as a reference currently.

Jeeper do you have a link for those blue lights? Honestly probably just going to go with those.

These are the next set I am going with, my first set was blue/white. I only wish the power cords were longer... But at $20/each, I could replace every panel when it goes bad and still come out ahead after selling a few plants... I've had my current ones on for 8-14hrs a day for the last 6months and they are still going strong.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B016CZMO ... 6XBR&psc=1