FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

So in using a 2ft x 4ft 74in tall shelving unit for my plants. I've had two of the shelves lit so far. My main shelf has (2) 4ft twin tube T8 fixtures. This shelf currently houses my seedlings, Cephalotus, capensis and pygmy Drosera. The lights are approximately 6-7in from the tops of the pots.

The second shelf has some orchids on it and has closer to a ft from pots to lights.

I have about a dozen or so new plants plus at least 4 types of seeds to sow. I want to light up at least two more shells, but the next two shelves are even 'shorter' than my main shelf. They're maybe 10-11in total not counting space lost from pots or light fixtures.

Would LED panels be efficient/effective at such a low height? Attached is an only picture but it does show the spacing of the shelves...

Those shelves are adjustable aren’t they. It really depends on how strong the light is as to how high it needs to be above the plants. My 300 watt LED stays 15-16 inches above but my 18 watt LEDs are only 5-6 inches above.

KategoricalKarnivore wrote:Those shelves are adjustable aren’t they. It really depends on how strong the light is as to how high it needs to be above the plants. My 300 watt LED stays 15-16 inches above but my 18 watt LEDs are only 5-6 inches above.

They are adjustable but a really big pain to do once it's all together. I think I might look at some lower wattage LEDs as the T8/5 units take up too much space. What 18watt units are you using KK?

It’s a led that is no longer made I believe.
Oh and it’s 16 watts. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00W6VNR ... ref=plSrch

Sooo did a thing...

CP Station 2.0

Added another section for houseplants and as a 'work bench'. 4 out of 6 shelves now lit. Top shelf by LED (pic below) next shelf by T8, then LED, the. T8. Each unit is '24 watts' and if you see how I mounted them at slight angles hopefully this will increase light absorbed by the plants. I will try and get some pictures posted by Wednesday of the whole unit with all the lights on.

And since I know some will ask, yes, these are white(7.7k) and blue (450nm) panels. I tested a '75 watt' panel for several weeks and it turned my cephalotus and a couple pings a nice red, which has gotten darker daily.

Tweaking my own. Yours is looking killer!

The mythical blue LED panels do exist after all... What brand is this?

SundewWolf wrote:The mythical blue LED panels do exist after all... What brand is this?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B016CZMS ... 0863217228

Hollyhock has been using the red/blue version with good results. For the price, can't really go wrong for my shelf size. I'll keep updating this with how my plant react over the coming weeks.

If all goes well, I might get more (probably ) and make an entire 2ft x 4ft shelf one big panel (2 rows of 4 panels).

Just wondering why you chose all blue. Plants like the red as well.

In general the blue spectrum is more useful for leaf growth. The MarsHydro for example, and other LEDs I've seen are generally for the cannabis hobby, where the reds are more important for flowering and making fat buds. In a regular panel i've seen it's usually 4:1 or 5:1 red:blue light, so too heavy towards one side IMO. It's interesting to see they made one that's all blue since it goes really heavy on the other side of the spectrum now. Ideally I think I would want a panel thats 4:1 blue to red (opposite of MarsHydro).

Also, they have "full spectrum" LEDs but they have the same problem since Full spectrum and Balanced spectrum are two different things. They can still have a bunch of warm LEDs and one or two blue ones and technically it has the full spectrum, but still out of balance.

Hungry Plants wrote:Just wondering why you chose all blue. Plants like the red as well.

While the spectrum is mostly all blue, they are alternating blue/white LEDs.

To be honest, I absolutely hate the 'purple light' that most the other lights put off. I like to view my plants in their grow space and the blue/white light is much more pleasing to me. I also look at the plants themselves, while red light does play a role, I'm not arguing that, I'm not growing Venus flytraps necessarily for their flowers. I would not have chosen the lights I did without evidence of their working well. Like I said above, I had cephs and pings that were pure green under my old lights and they are now various shades of reds/maroons so they are already proving their worth to me.

I've placed my trays of 20+ species of pygmy drosera on the shelf with these lights and will monitor their gammae production and growth under these lights. Time will tell how effective they are, and at approx $20/ea, I'm not out a lot of money if I need to supplement them with some additional LEDs, red/blue or what have you...

Picture with all the lights on. One tray of pygmy drosera under the new LEDs. 3 days so far and everything is very dewy , except some of the BCP stuff... Cephs and one ping under new LEDs for trial.