205w LED vs 400w HID Let the battle begin!

[DR PONIX]

It must be getting hard to troll when actual side by side evidence is
presented...

wheres the evidence all i see is some plants veggin?????? have u even did a full run there bro??? keep dreaming bro untill i see anything but a 3 x 2 cuboard lit up just a gimmic too me

 

[blazeoneup]

wheres the evidence all i see is some plants veggin?????? have u even did a full run there bro??? keep dreaming bro untill i see anything but a 3 x 2 cuboard lit up just a gimmic too me

If that is so why even stop by this thread?

I do agree in a sense, But at the same time these lights have their uses, Not everyone wants to be the next don won millionaire from growing pot lmao.

Some people want to grow some good smoke and nothing more, for those people the leds may be the solution.

I'm not doing this to prove leds are the next big thing, I'm doing this to see if leds are viable for smaller grows etc, Obviously there is not currently a led that compares to a 1k light, Does that mean there never will be? I dont think so...

I'd never try to run a commercial grow with floresent lights, That does not mean that floresents arent viable for cloning and small veg area's.

Same with leds I probly wont never try running a commercial style setup with leds but does that make them worthless? Nope not at all.

Your looking at things with your eyes closed. Until I see a jigga watt worth of leds growing 100,000 lbs their worthless.

Again if this little 3x2 or whatever grow isnt gonna prove nothing to you then why even post? Just to post and shine some hate on the subject?

 

[grow2bfree]

DrP - imho, there are always people who are critical of any change or developments that might change or challenge their current belief system. This just shows the mindset of the individual. If it was not for the pioneering efforts of people like LEDGIRL and others, how would we advance in our technologies to improve mother earth's greatest gift, and maintain what freedom we still have in this draconian society. I am sure if there had been the internet back in the day, I am sure there would have been people saying something like: "You cant get the same results inside as you can outside, you just cant grow without the sun". If this had been the mentality of people like, well, Thomas Edison, for example, we would still be using candles and lanterns. (Wonder what kind of yield that would produce, lol).

That being said, I applaud anyone that attempts to further our beloved plant. Success or failure, is still a lesson learned, someone will pick up the ball and make it better. We are only limited by our imagination.

Not sure if you have seen LEDGIRL's personal Led grows, but here is a snippet of one of her threads available here.

A few people have asked me recently why I don't post a lot of pictures from my own garden online, and the honest answer is simply that I didn't have much to show up until now. I went on a trip to Mexico in September, and during that time a lot of my plants stressed out, so I chopped a lot of them early, and left some of the scragglers that were in better condition, alone in 1 tray. It took us a couple of weeks to get some more plants ready to fill up the bloom room, and now I welcome you to see what I do personally with LED's.

First and foremost, I am a legal medical patient, within my legal guidelines for plant #, etc..., and this is my personal garden. I don't support breaking the law, or the illegal growing of marijuana.

Here's some information on my garden:

Each plant veges for about 4-5 weeks prior to entering the bloom room. During that time, they are usually topped about 3x, causing the plants to grow into super-thick little bushes with lots of tops. Once they reach 18" height, they transfer to bloom.

The bloom room operates at 85-90 degrees during the "day" cycle, and 65-70 degrees during the "night cycle. The humidity remains between 60-75%. There is a wall-mounted fan on each side of the room for good air movement, and of of course a carbon filter. My bloom room is a sealed environment, with CO2 levels at a constant 1500ppm via a fuzzy-logic controller. Since I use aeroponics, the nutrient solution is run through a water chiller, which maintains it at a constant 67-72 degrees. There is also a micro-pore air diffuser, and a commercial air pump constantly supplying oxygen to the solution.

In my bloom room are two 2' x 4' x 1' Aeroponics trays that our company manufactures. At full capacity, I run 8 plants per tray. Hanging over each tray, are six 126W LED Grow Lights that we also developed (as most of you know). So that's 756W over 8 plants x 2. The total room measures 9' x 8', with an 8' ceiling, and is lined in 97% reflective mylar (from the HID days). The canopy space measures approximately 5' x 6'.

I feed my girls Advanced Nutrients, Iguana Juice Bloom, and Dr. Hornby's Big Bud (not the current crap advanced makes since they split with Hornby). I run no other supplements currently in bloom. The nutrients are added per the manufacturer's recommendations for heavy feeding, and the reservoir is topped off with water mid-way through the week. Nutrients are changed out weekly when the system gets cleaned.

The current strains you'll see in these photographs are: Strawberry Cough X White Rhino, Ice, Grape Ape, Maui Wowie, AK47, Purple Arrow, Sensi Star, and Afghani X Brazilian Skunk. These plants will be replaced in a few months by Pineapple Express, Barney's LSD, Yumbolt 47, LA Confidential, Alaskan Ice, and A-Train.

Anyhow, these pictures were taken 10-14-09, Enjoy!:

CLOSE UP SHOTS OF LAST 2 PHOTOS:

Here is the link. http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=145484

One other thought. If I were a "cash cropper", I would be investigating any possibility that would help make my grow safer and still produce quality bud. Which, by the way, I have not seen any skilled grower say "Led buds suck as compared to HIDs". Monetarily, even if leds were twice the price they would still pay for themselves within 12 months while still making a tidy profit.

Stay Green, Stay Safe.
Peace

 

[Voodoo]

there are always people who are critical of any change or developments that might change or challenge their current belief system.

Beautifully said. I routinely pull results out of my all CFL flowering setup that meet or beat expectations and yet people still tell me that HPS is the ONLY solution. Your setup is pretty, how many watts are you running?

To the original poster - excellent work, I love seeing side by sides. Going to be interesting to see if the 400 falls behind the LEDs in flower.

 

[NHMI]

I tell ya I was really skeptical of LED's in the beginning but they really are the way to go if you got the cash to spend...it will be nice when the price drops a lil bit cuz while they use half the wattage, they are often 2-4x as much as conventional lighting. I would be curious to see what it would have been like with a CMH because of its broad spectrum as well as a MH/HPS grow with the new bulb. I don't know how bulbs degrade, spectrum-wise, but would think if you had a shitty bulb that was old it may be missing some aspect of the spectrum that may be important....but there is no doubt the LEDs are just as good IMO. I have started aquiring smaller pannels before reading up, so they will be suplimental side lights and I have one 50w pannel but ordered a power supply and some 10w & 20w red and blue LED's so I would like to see if I can make my own 100w pannel to add to my 2, 400w HPS's (Though going to CMH, one will be in Monday and the other I will order when I have extra cash...)

Anyway Kudos to you on this grow. I am sure this put a lot of people's fears to rest about LED's since they did better IMO, despite the couple disadvantages of the MH...but great job!

 

[Centrum]

These things are just Dogging the HID in VEG!!
Good job Blaze !!

 

[killerweed31]

amazing man!!!!
great plant!!!!!!!

 

[PetFlora]

Most def LEDs work!

However, I think any test should be current LED technology against the best that HID/HPS has to offer.

The reason I replaced my 400 HPS light system was consistently poor results. Turns out neither the bulb, the ballast nor the hood were higest quality, but I was a noob back then.

A fair test would be to compare the 205 against a new Ushio or Hortilux bulb with a NextGen type ballast and SunSystems II hood: this light system would be closer in price, too.

Further, shouldn't this test be against like amounts of R/B spectrum? That might require using a 600, which I am told is the least hps watts to get a balanced color spectrum, though the new CMHs might have closed that gap.

So you know I am far from a LED hater...

Almost done with my second LED grow (UFO 90), though I did supplement with 50- 100 watt equivalents of CFL under the canopy. From this experience, I think you need at least 205 LED watts in order to maximize yield from a 2 X 3 area.

I didn't know that the girls are happiest in 70-85 degree temps, plus 70% humidity for vegging- just one of the lessons I learned the hard way during this cold S FL winter. If they are not getting heat from the lights (they won't with LEDs), where will they get it?

Taking too long to learn this and correct it, no doubt cost me big time in yield, and tric production. That said, the LED side has produced several 8-10" fat colas, and at least twice the amount of trics as the 950 watt equivalent CFL side! Won't that equal twice the potency, or value?

 

[DR PONIX]

LOL

LOL

u guys should read the posts before jumping on peeps as i said there great for the hobbiest but in my opinion still not comparable to mags.. this is like a add for leds, dont want some poor fucker thinking there just as good, give it time and i think it will, all i said is i wanna see a real side by side, the plants pictured above arent very convincing,, if someone can proove me wrong its blaze didint wanna start shit just stateing the facts my bro just finished a led vs hps the led did very good better then i thought, but in an enviorment bigger then a cuboard i dont think thed fair as well.. hate me if yall want proof is in the pudding and i havent seen anything impressive yet

 

[LovableHuggable]

Someone back in my college town had a bus underground full of LEDs for lights and it was most definitely a cash crop. I read about it getting busted in Jan. I knew about it 8 years ago but nothing about the setup. Police knew about it 5 years ago according to article. They either thought they were better or didn't want to deal with the heat of HID.

 

[unjust]

Looking good Blaze m8
Its amazing to see how much bushier the LED side is to the HID.
But I knew that would happen as im growing with LED's too.But its V.nice to see a side by side grow to see what im not missing out on with the HID's.
Keep up the good work dude.
Unjust

 

[3dDream]

They are bushy because there is too much blue light?

 

[grow2bfree]

One other thought, then I'll shut up and go back to lurking.

I keep hearing the phrase "as good as". I think that is very subjective. What one might say is "as good as" might differ from another, or from time or place.

I will use "a friend" as an example: He lives in a state that has yet to step up when it comes to growing your own medication. So obviously he has certain needs and desires. "As good as" for him is too be able to produce as much medicine as possible and stay as stealthy as possible. Whatever method/light allows him to do this, in the same or less amount of space, while violating as few laws as possible would be considered "as good as", or better. (He hates having to break any laws, but right is right and wrong is wrong. Telling someone they cannot grow their own, natural medication, is just plain wrong, no matter how you try to spin it.)

If this happens to be Led, HID, a flashlight, or combination of all three, so be it. If it produces the same quality, quantity, taste (hate yucky medicine), uses less power, and produces less heat, He's in.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

Peace and good health

 

[grow2bfree]

Blaze: Sorry, couldn't let it go. Looking great.

Peace

 

[VerdantGreen]

looking nice blaze!

on the subject of larger scale commercial grows, i guess that if all someone is interested in making money then these LED's are an expensive investment that would take some of your first harvest to recoup, but if you are interested in power efficiency and better quality product then they should be worth considering.

personally i think 4 of these 205 units over a 5x5 would work just great.

 

[hazy]

Nice, Blaze.
I'm really surprised at the growth difference. The LEDs are vegging up some nice bushes
I'm all done with mine and will do another real soon. Right now I just have a big sour diesel finishing under the led. it's a space issue.
looking good.

 

[Tropik]

such a big growth difference

 

[PetFlora]

My major complaint regarding LEDs is that those currently offered to us have a HUGE problem. What happens when the bulbs fade/blow? Mfgs need to rethink their designs so that the bulbs are modular and user replaceable. That way we could buy and install the replacement module, then return ythe bad ones for partial credit.

 

[AOD2012]

led is really rocking it right now. looking real good blaze, am very interested to see how everything starts to look in flower.

 

[NicholasSmokes]

PetFlora- I'm fairly certain that would raise the manufacturing cost significantly. Perhaps they could build a simple digital timer in the lights that runs whenever they are on. That way you could easily see how many hours the lights have on them.

As LEDs become popular for room lighting, the prices are going to drop significantly.