FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

anyone else here growing indoors using cobs/smd LED Lights? I would like to know your opinions/experiences on using LEDS (cobs/smd types mainly) and ALSO do you use red/blue or full spectrum white? I myself am currently using COBS blue/red 50watts a piece, I have 5 of them over my plants each @ 50Watts for a total of 250Watts, Lumens total around 25k lumen output. My setup is also water cooled for max working efficiency of the lights. So far my plants have been fine with the setup. traps are nice and responsive, good colors and lots of new traps forming ect. Let me know what you all think about LEDs.. I'll include a couple pics of my plants and the light itself.

The cobs each one uses 50 watts of power, Its anywhere from as low as 80 to a max of 130 depending on the LED's used. With 5 cobs running @ 50watts I should be seeing around 20k lumens at absolute minimal, Mine I'd assume are hitting the 100 per watt range or better due to water cooling. They stay way cooler than they did with the fan. I do have white full spectrum in the grow room its just not directly on my carnivorous plants, but there is full spectrum bouncing around the walls of my room. In total I have 2 of these cob LED setups running both water cooled setups and two t5's @ 340 watts roughly. As for my peat moss I'm currently using "Premier" brand, bought the 2.2 cf bale from home depot. Perlite organic I got from amazon I'll update with the brand name can't think of it rn.

I've never fought about sifting the peat moss, the next time I repot I will give it a try. Any added benefits doing so?

Majestic earth is what I would of gotten if there was any available, ended up with the premier brand and its good I like it so far but as you were saying to sift to get the little debris out, premier has quite a bit of little sticks ect. its all broken down quite well its very minor but you can tell by looking at it that its not the "cleanest" peat moss. I miss living in the sticks/rural, Currently living like borderline downtown (Flint Mi). Its nice having everything close for once but I must say I do miss the peace and quiet...

I exclusively use white LED lights (4000k generally) for my plants. I have two COBs I set up when I first started, and the rest are light bars. The COBs work fine but I was never happy with the uneven light distribution and they're impossible to use on shelving because the light is so concentrated. I also don't like them requiring active cooling since 50W is a lot of power concentrated in a very small area. In any case, the plants grow just fine under them, just like any other white light source.

I used SMD's 4000K Full spectrum. The type of LED's are the Cree 5 watt JR5050 K 30V series which are horticulture grade. I currently use 96 of them on a custom printed aluminum circuit board in an aluminum housing to help dissipate heat. The housing only gets to around 90 deg F. Light distribution isn't too bad.

One thing the plant community, including ours, needs to get away from is gauging the quality of grow lights and LED's by watts and lux/lumens. It's all in the light spectrum and how much PAR the plants can receive in PPFD uMOL /m2/second. Also, one big thing when it comes to LED's is the efficiency. We don't want a bunch of heat. Heat = wasted power. However, heat is just part of the process.

For example the one of the Custom LED light that I built recently is currently running at 80 true watts, this is the amount of power the actual light is using. From the wall its probably around 90-100 watts. The light board is 14.5 inches from the top of the plants. It is putting out a PPFD of 580-600 umol/m2/s. The Lux/Lumens is at 51,900. Blurple lights at the same wattage would have a hard time keeping up to the ouput of these Cree LED's. I measured the output with an Apogee Quantum PAR Sensor and the Sekonic C-800-U Spectrometer.






Here are some images of my plants under this light. Please don't mind the rough looking VFT's they are Death Cube Rescues that are recovering and coloring up nicely. Tent is kind of empty as well. I just started to get back into the carnivorous plant world after a long break. Also, in the images, some of the seeds that I'm germinating in these pictures are from 2014/2015. I've had seeds from my entire collection in the fridge for the past 8 to 9 years to resurrect my collection. Some are germinating, which is wild.





I love seeing people tinker. Personally, I feel that if more people tinker with grow light. The price of good LED lights will drop. I built the light in these pictures for less than 200 USD and at max power it will compete with 600watt professional LED grow lights.