I’ve been doing a bit of reading and coming up to speed with all of the changes. I used to grow a bit for fun when I was younger. Mix of indoor and outdoor, hydro, aero, soil. Was never an expert, but had some pretty decent results.
In any case, fast forward a few years, and like some other members, I’m jumping back in.
I got a Maxsisun 2000 LED light. I know the HLG lights are preferred here, but at the time did not know about them, and am going to stick with this for a while.
My tent is one of the 3x4 tents, with the optional divider. I have that in right now and have a 3x3 area. I will be initially growing in soil. I have an exhaust fan hooked up and using a warming mat to bring temp up a bit. My tent is in an insulated shed, but NW winter has consistently chilly days.
My question is this. I still have an old 400W ballast with both MH and HPS bulbs. It works fine. I was thinking of avoiding it because of energy consumption and my thought was to get an additional LED for flowering. What do you guys think about using a hybrid lighting system like this? It seems like overkill for a small space, and the HPS will bring energy usage up quite a bit.
Let’s ask @dbrn32 about the light. The efficacy listed for the diodes on the Maxisun looks good at 2.7 umol/J, but the diodes are LM281B, which I have not heard of. It’s a 200w light. You are likely to do best with supplemental lighting during flowering in a 3x4 space. It’s probably fine for veg, but likely to fall short for flowering. Let’s see what DBRN thinks.
Thanks for the replies! I’ll try this system for the first cycle, but for powers sake may want to invest in a second led. If I were gonna go that route and my focus was on flowering so you guys have a recc?
I have a 3x4 set up with a 315 CMH, I use to use 2 Tolys 600 (from Amazon) but did not find the buds to be very dense so I decided to buy a CMH which I love.
On my current grow (auto flower AK) I decided to put to put one led on each side of my CMH.
I harvested 1 that finished early dried it and is currently in a jar curing.
Well I don’t know about anyone else but when I have a new strain in the jar curing it just seems to scream at me through the glass TRY ME!
so two days in to the cure I broke down and figured Just a little taste.
I already new that the buds looked like the best I have grown to date indoor (looked like commercially grown weed) but when I tried it it knocked me down. It was very smooth and my ankles went numb not the feet or legs just the ankles. I have not been that high in a long time.
I’ve had commercially grown stuff like House plant @ 27.8%that never hit me that hard.
so I will take in to consideration it was a new strain I had grown but I have never grew anything that nice, I like to think the lights had something to do with it so I’m going to start some Jack Herer auto and see if they come out the same as always or better with the LED’s and CMH
not sure how much it cost to run HPS & MH but my 315 CMH runs me around $20 a month, I’m running 20/4 for my autos. it was cheaper to run LEDs but quality was way down so I switched.
for me adding in the LEDs is a small added expense (as opposed to adding HSP to LEDs) but if the quality I got from my last harvest is due to the hybrid lighting I used, then I wouldn’t bat an eye at paying $50 extra a month on my hydro.(but I’m happy it’s only $20)
I say go for it and the results from your first harvest will guide you to decide if it’s worth the extra cost. I think your going to be happy with the results (coming from someone that ran LEDs and switched to CMH)
Good luck with your grow!
Interesting on the cmh. I hadn’t looked into this-didn’t even know that there was new tech in the halide world.
Definitely want to keep the existing led. I’m pretty fond of it. Haven’t done a light test, but seems to be almost comparable in light to my 400 with a halide bulb.
Seems like this is a pretty wide discussion(lighting) in regards to what works best. I want great results, but I also like the idea of not stressing my electrical system. My ballast is pretty old. As I said, will probably try it for this flower cycle.
If I went with an led in addition to the maxsisun, would something in the “1000 w” range give me enough coverage? With many of the lights switching to Samsung diodes is there still that much of a difference between the chinese and American brands? It seems that everyone has a different opinion. Hard to figure out what it really is
