I'll be doing a 60 day run of pure Afghan Kush, Fruity Chronic Juice and Platinum OG Kush in 4x4 tent with3 gal pots in a drain-to-waste sytem with coco-coir as my medium. I'll be using the General Hydroponics Flora Nova Series as a base nutrient and will be adding Floralicious Bloom, CaMg and organic molasses as a sweetener. It's a very simple and successful method of growing the first two strains and since this is my first run with the POG we'll just have to wait and see. I usually veg the plants for 14 days or so until they are about 18 inches tall then flip to 12/12 and will see around 36 inch final heights. I let them grow as single cola's and when I used to run them under 1000w HPS I would see around a 2 1/2- 3 oz avg. of final dried and cured weight. Due to high heat and electrical costs I decided to give LED a try and I saw an ad in a magazine for a 300w LED light from a company that sadly is no longer in business. I took the LED array and combined it with two 250w full sprectrum CFL bulbs with wing reflectors as supplemental lighting and that's what I've used for the last two cycles. The set-up did produce quality but the weight dropped to only 1-1 1/2 oz's and I quickly realize it was due to the low power of the LED light and the CFL lighting couldn't make up for that. So after a few months of research I came across the California Light Works Solarstorm 800 and boy am I glad I did. When I received the light from UPS and got it home and unpacked it and plugged it in I could just see all the additional power from this light. I mean it is so bright I now have to wear sunglasses when I have the tent open. It is also very well constructed and the only draw back that I have had was that it is a little on the heavy side and I didn't trust it to just hang there on the tent poles like the much lighter lights that have always hung from them so I took a couple hours to hang four 60 lb hooks from the ceiling studs with support wires running thru tiny holes in the tent roof to the poles and then the light is attached to the poles with four adjustable straps with hooks securing the light. It's actually pretty clean and I will post a picture when I start posting pictures of the plants next week.
One of the most common problems that I've seen with LED grows is that many people use far too little light for far too large of an area. The SS will double the amount of LED light that you used to run and since it has 5w diodes it will penetrate better too. It may not be as good as a 1000w HPS, yield/density/penetration wise, but it will be better than your older 3w diode LED light.
Disclaimer: I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.
Well first of all, thank you to sister mary for the interest. And as to your comments, I do expect to see greater yield/density/penetration from a light that is actually over three times as powerful (300w light only tested out at 180w due to cheaper diodes that could not be driven at higher output without early failures) and I don't expect it to have the power of a 1000w HPS, I only hope to equal the veg/flower capabilities of a 600w HPS as this light is only rated at a little over 600w and when I ran HPS last year I had the ballast adjusted down to 600w due to heat issues and saw good yields from the two strains that I ran.If I see results like normal and my central air isn't running all day long I will be one happy camper. OK so the five girls have been under the new light for about 10 days or so and they are very happy looking. After a hour of lights on all the bud leafs are standing up and waving and that will always tell me they are happy. I took some pics and tried to post them but it won't let me because the HD pic file is too large (4 MB) so if anyone has any idea how to get around this problem please let me know and meanwhile i'll see if I can borrow a camera that doesn't take as high a quality pic
It seems like you're making progress, I'm looking forward to seeing how your grow turns out. 600-650 grams should be doable with the SolarStorm, I think comparing it to a 600w HPS is fair and reasonable.
As you obviously know, the SS does put out more heat than your other LED (due to the more powerful diodes, I assume), but it should be less than a non-cooled HID so your savings may depend, partially, on your old setup too. I haven't done a cost/benefit analysis comparing a 600w HPS to LED but I have compared a 1000w HPS to LED because many LED companies claim their 300-800w LED lights will replace a 1000w HID. My analysis showed the 1000w, cooled, HID to be more cost effective over the life of the lights.
Don't forget to take some pictures with the LED off so we can see normal colors too...
Disclaimer: I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.
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sorry everyone that i did not post last week due to vacation. here are some new pics and sorry sister mary I was not able to find any other decent light souce for the tent nut ill borrow something asap and get better pics. We are now on day 24 and the buds are starting to develop nicely on the upper half and the bottom is lagging a bit and the platinum OG is also a tad slower than the other two so that may spell doom for that strain as I have been trying to find a 3rd strain that grows well with the other two but....maybe it will close with a rush LOL
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ok all plants are finished, harvested and mostly cured and im posting some pics of the best buds from each strain. unfortunately the Platinum OG did not do well due to too much stretch during flowering that went right past the light and was not taken all the way.
Final dry weights were: Afghan Kush plant #1- 3 1/4 oz plant#2- 3 3/4 oz
Fruity Chronic Juice plant #1- 3 1/2 oz plant #2- 3 3/4 oz plant #3- 4 1/4 oz
As you can see from the weights that I achieved my goal of 3-3 1/2 oz's per plant (a little taller than normal 3 ft)but there are some things that I should point out. I did get a little nute burn on the leaf tips and can't explain it except that the nutes that I used are the same nutes used for the last couple of years at the same strength and never got any burn before and the light was the only change. Also saw some chlorophyl bleaching from the top of a few of the buds but it didn't affect the final results it just looked kinda weird. I think it was due to the intensity of the light and the fact that I actually had the light closer than the recommended distance(waited too long to buy light). My opinion about this light after this grow is that it is a great light for SOG or SCROG or for growing short bushy 3 footers like I do but probably not ready for commercial growers due to not enough light penetration through a taller canopy. I was able to do some rough calculations on my electrical usage based on previous months and came up with approx. $115-125 per month for a 12/12 cycle.. This is a little more than my previous lights used but a lot less than HPS. This will be my last post but I will check back a couple of times over the next week or so in case anyone has any questions
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1 of 7 buds from two afghan kush plants
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1 of 14 buds from three Fruity Chronic Juice plants
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2 of 14 buds from three FCJ plants
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Not bad, I think you have the LED yield record here...so far. Around 536 grams off 620w of LED light = .86g/w which is respectable. I'm still hoping that somebody beats the 1g/w mark.
Thanks for sharing!
Disclaimer: I still use HID and I'm NOT an LED expert. All of my LED knowledge is from other parties or research so I can't say from first hand experience one way or another. I also run a medical grow consulting business in SoCal.