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lighting diy led grow light question/premade grow lights, best bang for bucks

C

canuckheat

Ive got a line on some leds from a reef aquarium supply website local to me. I used his leds on my old reef tank with great results, so I am contimplating building a grow light to start from seed early due to our short season.
The light would be very basic 20 red leds 3w and 20 blue 3w leds all on one channel with a timer and fans they will be suspended in a way that allows me to raise or lower them. Is this the right colors? All the led grow lights I see are blues and reds or reds and greens/cyan

Thanks in advance guys and gals. Anything I should know about plants and leds? Or suggestions? I only plan to grow 5-10 seedlings space permitting.

Thanks


Ok scratch that turns out his leds don't fill the need range of spectrum blah blah... (gibberish) lol

Any suggestions for a decent(CHEAP) grow light to cover a few square feet? Or 3-5 plants?
 
Thanks for that. Hmm turns out his reds only run from 620-630nm and blues are sold out lol. Well that was a short lived idea. Any suggestions on on a cheap low wattage grow light? Preferably under $150 that can do a few square feet?
 
I haven't tried building my own yet, but I've seen many homemade, both online and in person.

A friend built a 200w panel that outperforms 600w of HID for around $150.
 
Best bang for your buck would be a 150W HPS light, its only 50W above your goal & you really can't beat HID lighting for lumen/watt ratio. LEDs may eventually catch up but currently you'll spend far more on an equivalent LED fixture.
 
Here's a good example of a 150W HPS light vs a 250W CFL light growing peppers (thank to PHB who found this link):
 
http://www.3ch.co.uk/hps-vs-cfl/info_104.html
 
Results speak for themselves.
 
Also can be found for <$70 on Amazon.com:
 
http://www.amazon.com/Hydrofarm-SBM150S-150-Watt-Mini-Sunburst/dp/B0055F80H0/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1370362900&sr=1-1&keywords=sun+systems+150
 
 
Edit:
 
Since I can't read, I didn't notice you were only planning on growing seedlings. If you're not thinking about growing through flowering then you can probably get away with some cheap cool white CFLs or some T5 fluorescent grow lights. The T5s are a bit more expensive but nicer & easier to mount than a bunch of CFLs.
 
Thanks I think I'll go t5 cause I have my old aquarium t5 light kicking around collecting dust. 4x24w bulbs should suffice :P we'll see this winter. Anyone know if regular aquarium plant bulbs would work? They come from 2700k-10000k in a variety of color options such as cool white, neutral, warm, blue, red, pink etc. Haha from what ive read 2700-6500 k would be sufficient?
 
canuckheat said:
Thanks I think I'll go t5 cause I have my old aquarium t5 light kicking around collecting dust. 4x24w bulbs should suffice :P we'll see this winter. Anyone know if regular aquarium plant bulbs would work? They come from 2700k-10000k in a variety of color options such as cool white, neutral, warm, blue, red, pink etc. Haha from what ive read 2700-6500 k would be sufficient?
Click to expand...
 
Should be good to go with anything in that spectrum. I'd go for the cooler blue ones simply because 6500K light is supposed to keep plants a bit shorter than ones grown under 2700K light. Check the lumen output though, sometimes the warmer lights will put out significantly more than the cooler ones, in that case go with the brighter bulb. The difference in stretching between bluish & reddish light will be minimal as long as the light is bright enough.
 
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