jaymu86
New Member
My experience exactly bro and glad I'm in with the right family now
Sent from my HTC Desire Eye using 420
3rd Grow: Amare Tech 450W LED & UVB, 4x4 Tent
Sent from my HTC Desire Eye using 420
ItsNatural
Well-Known Member
Alot of us would never be able to resale it tho so that 50 is out for me.
I disagree that either panals in 3 years will even be worth $500. For several different reasons. 1/ There is a Boom right now with these things. And Depending on what happens in the Election, who becomes president, what and how many states become completely legal, depending on all that and more, the Boom will get bigger. And in doing so, More attention will be on bigger and better lights and Technology. As im sure you know Technology gets better fast. I once bought a 200mb flash drive for like $40 50 bucks. Now for the same price I can get a 64GB flash drive that is 3.0USB so much much faster. Computers are the same way. You can buy a brand new computer right now, top of the line, and in 3 years it will almost be outdated. I believe (It may just be the day dreamer in me) that more and more state will become legal, more and more countries will become legal, and as it does, Technology in the lights themselves will get better. And cheaper. HOPEFULLY. I mean it has already happened, really. Look at the 3w to 5w change. Now there are lights with 10w and more.
I totally agree, Versai should run a blog.
Love this talk about the LEDs also. I keep seeing peoples Mars burn out and have to be sent back. But the Amare is to expensive for me. I just cant afford it. I had to save up for the Mars I have. And if it goes out. I will have to save again to buy another. I just hope By the time I need another. They are either cheaper, or better with better penetration. I wish I could afford those lights
Hey Versai! Spread the word for the smokathon. See you there!
The Great July 4th Smok-a-thon of 2016!
The Great July 4th Smok-a-thon of 2016!
David Bowman
New Member
Hope all is well in your world.
Thanks for sharing this grow with us.
Please head over to the 420 Strain Reviews forum and post your smoke report there too.
I’m moving this to Completed Journals now.
Have you started a new grow you would like to share with us?
If so, please feel free to start a new journal here: Journals in Progress
You can use the Report Post feature found at the bottom left of every post and we'll move it for you right away.
Sending you lots of love and positive energy.
Thanks for sharing this grow with us.
Please head over to the 420 Strain Reviews forum and post your smoke report there too.
I’m moving this to Completed Journals now.
Have you started a new grow you would like to share with us?
If so, please feel free to start a new journal here: Journals in Progress
You can use the Report Post feature found at the bottom left of every post and we'll move it for you right away.
Sending you lots of love and positive energy.
Nice grow but that is interesting. I just completed a grow comparison using a an AMARE SE-450 ( no lenses ) in a 4 x 4 tent against a 600 watt HPS system in a 5 x 5 tent. Growing one plant per light. The AMARE actually out produced the 600 watt system.
I should hope so. At 25 square feet, with a 600-watt HPS, that only gives you 24 watts per square foot, lol - which is well under the recommended minimum HID wattage for flowering of 50 watts/ft.². OtOH, 450 watts across 16 ft.² does (barely) fall within the generally recommended range for intense LED illumination.
Amare Technologies makes awesome LED panels, I am not disputing that. But when using HID lighting, a 25 ft.² flowering area calls for a 1kW at minimum. With equatorial sativas, I'd probably want a good bit more than that. It would have been a somewhat more fair comparison (IMHO) if you had used another 4'x4' tent for the 600-watt HPS instead of a 5'x5' one (even though the gross power consumption is higher with the HPS). The LED light might have still beaten it.
BtW, as you may have noticed from the auto-censoring of your link, links to other cannabis-related forums are verboten here. It might be a good idea to go back and edit your post to remove that part of the content.
- Thread starter
- #207
ConstantGreen
New Member
Thanks for the input Weed Dude. I'll go search for your journal later today. I'm sure theres some things I could be doing better. My 2nd round with the Amare is in progress so I haven't given up yet. Just been hellishly busy this summer so not much time to document or tweak things. Currently have 6 clones of the same plant under my 450 in the 4x4. I know this pheno produces fine and doesn't hermie, so I'm hoping for more reliable results this round. Going to flower the panel at 18" this time in a ~3x3 footprint. Currently vegging at 24", I'll post a pic later.
Hmm, That is interesting I thought 40 watts per square foot was the standard. Have you checked out the "Grow Boss" videos? If you take HPS light and measure PPFD a LED light a can produce the same amount of the targeted photons that are wasted in an HPS System (ie infra red (heat). I had grown with HPS for a few years and was an earlier adopter of LED. There are many LED companies that use marginal components in their lights which don't last. If you check out the DIY forums they stay are able to adopt newer technology quicker sorta like a DIY PC builder. LED technology follows Haitz Law which is like Moore's La. It takes a lot more for a company to implement to newer tech.
I understand your point but I was only growing one plant per light. Each plant was placed directly under the center of the light. They were kept at the same distance, came from the same mother and were selected because they were of similar size and structure. They were planted in the same media which was blended and came from the same bag. They were fed the same nutrients from the same mixed batch. The only difference is that the LED lights on was during the day and the HPS was on during the night.
Here are some pics... The third photo the LED is on the left.
Here are some pics... The third photo the LED is on the left.
Maybe in large multi-light grows. A lot depends on strain. When I was growing sativas almost exclusively, I considered 62.5 watts per square foot (of HID lighting) the very minimum.
No. I do not view cannabis-related videos on YouTube (and, in fact, have that website's scripts blocked from running on my computer). But if you can provide a link to those videos on a different server, one that is located in a different country, then I would probably watch them.
Now that you mention it, PPFD is a far better specification to use (even with HPS or other HID) than watts per square foot.
I try not to judge an industry based on its "bottom of the barrel" members, lol.
Nor do I choose products based on what might - or even probably will - occur in the future. I realize that R&D needs to be funded, lol, but I am not able to help with that.
It is a lot easier for an LED manufacturer to produce a product that has a high level of intensity directly underneath the panel than it is for it to fill an entire grow space with light. Even the product that I have ready to go as soon as the heat lets up provides a much higher level of illumination in the middle of a 3'x3' space than it does at the outer perimeter (and I feel that it is a very high-quality product, or it would not be here).
At the present time, on average, LED manufacturers' products seem able to fill a space with light or provide light that has good penetration, but not both at the same time. This Amare Technologies SE350+UVB strikes me as being better than most - but even it comes with a set of 90° lenses that the grower can use (or not) depending on whether he/she is more interested in penetration or a larger footprint.
I commend you for using (as much as possible) the "same plant" for both grows. And having as many other variables the same as possible is also a good thing in a way. On the other hand, I would like to see some kind of comparison grow that, again, uses the same plant (in a manner of speaking) for each, but tailors everything else to the light being used in that grow. It might even be a good idea to give one such plant to each of two people who have worked with whichever lights are being used in the comparison extensively enough to (+/-) master the lights and let them grow whichever way they have found to be best. Same nutrient brands, sure. Same gross style of growing (soil or hydroponics, "organic" or not), sure. Same area square footage and design (IOW, same characteristics of reflectivity, et cetera), too (but not necessarily the same shape). But let them tune all the details based on the specific characteristics and strengths (& weaknesses) of the lights.
Oh, and allow the growers to fill the spaces IF they so desire. Judge based on yield amounts, "quality" of the bud - not just potency, but other factors, too. I have seen (and experienced :rolleyes3 ) grows that resulted in pretty good weights but the buds were significantly more airy / less dense than expected. Some people might be cool with that, but many would not. Then there are things such as taste and aroma. As I feel that the spectrum of illumination which a plant receives can have some affect on those, they should be factors in ranking the grows, too. And time - I would consider the time from start to harvest to be a factor worthy of including. Cost per day might be a good thing to combine with time. To be honest with you, I have no idea how all these various factors should be ranked in regards to significance in determining a winner of a comparison. Some folks want a harvest in as short a time as possible and are willing to pay for that, while others want to spend as little as possible but are willing to wait longer, if necessary, to make that happen. Et cetera.
And afterwards... Repeat everything with a different strain which has markedly different characteristics (as far as growth and the like are concerned), lol.
It is (relatively) easy to compare two different lighting products. But if one tries to choose a clear winner, the task quickly becomes rather complicated. Even answering the question, "What works best... for ME?" is not simple.
I know you had your reasons for that difference. But it leads me to ask some questions: Were you able to maintain temperatures in the optimum range for growing cannabis (77°F to 86°F, with the higher end allowing cannabis to use the most light-energy up to the maximum that the species is capable of processing under good conditions without CO₂ supplementation) in both setups? Was that temperature the same (more or less, depending on whether or not the amount of illumination that each plant received was the same)? Were you able to provide an adequate temperature differential (and, again, the same amount for both plants) between lights-on and lights-off times? Did you have any other temperature-related conditions which might have influenced one setup or the other, either favorably or unfavorably, such as increasing the temperature differential for the hour or two before lights-on to help encourage a shorter, bushier plant? As, again, the strengths and weaknesses of the lights are different, this could end up favoring one over the other.
If I was trying to get the absolute best performance out of, for example, a 400-watt HPS and 400 watts' worth of 4' fluorescent tubes, I would certainly set up and run each grow differently. I feel that "scrog" is the only real way to get maximum performance out of the latter, since the penetration capabilities of the latter, well, kind of sucks, lol. I have run the same general setup ("scrog") with 400-watt HPS lights lots of times, and this worked well. But doing so was mainly due to comfort and personal choice. I have seen different types of setups that were capable of - and did - produce much more. I wouldn't, by choice, use those growing styles. But if the goal of my grow was to wring every last gram out of a light... I would have to.
I'm just rambling (as usual), lol. BtW, it looks like you had a couple pretty nice grows/harvests.
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention this, but if your camera or phone has adjustable white-balance settings, you can use a white object (such as a sheet of posterboard) to calibrate it for the specific lighting conditions and, therefore, help pictures taken under HPS illumination look much more natural (and easier on the eyes of the viewer). Doing so might even help remove the "alien purple sun" look from some people's LED grow pictures - but, of course, that isn't necessary with a (primarily) "white" light LED product such as you used. "Welcome to the White Light Revolution," indeed,
!Awesome reply T. S. Yes, I do agree that LED's are very directional and most tend to have a hot spot in the middle of the light. The simplest way to correct this is to use a light mover. The lenses are used mainly for penetration into the canopy and also to focus the light providing a higher PPFD but reducing the footprint. Yes, The temperatures were relatively consistent but it was a challenge since we have had such variation this year. They were both vegged in the same tent and temperature and light conditions. You present a very good point and I will take that into consideration. I always run my grows "hot" preferring to run in the low 80's. After looking at annual temperature pattern were most land races originated from. As you can see I tend to grow "trees". Since we grow strictly for medicinal use, quality is more important than yield and the focus of our grows. We do blind testing where the patient is given a sample of each and then asked to rate it. (I feel this can be subjective depending on the patient.) but it does provide some valuable feedback. We also have a caregiver circle who will grow the same strain and provide feedback and samples for comparison. This provides a lot of different growing variables and helps to provide a good genetic base structure for each phenom type. I don't use CO2 supplementation but have considered it but I lean towards having adequate air exchange.
The main reason for this grow was to compare the AMARE SE-450 with a 600 watt HPS system. I had seen way to many comparison grows were the lights were in the same "room" or tent. It always bothered me because I knew you had to get photon bounce from the other light source. One thing I did when I received my 450 was to reach out to AMARE and tell them I would like to journal a comparison grow. They encouraged it! Even when I told them that I would be completely objective. In all honesty I was slightly surprised by the results seeing that the HPS system had almost a 200 watt advantage. I know that one grow isn't a definitive conclusion but it does provide some some definitive information.
Appreciate the tip on the "white balance"I never figured out how to make that adjustment on my camera and get it to work correctly.
Thank You for the kind words and many good observations.
Keep it Green,
WD
The main reason for this grow was to compare the AMARE SE-450 with a 600 watt HPS system. I had seen way to many comparison grows were the lights were in the same "room" or tent. It always bothered me because I knew you had to get photon bounce from the other light source. One thing I did when I received my 450 was to reach out to AMARE and tell them I would like to journal a comparison grow. They encouraged it! Even when I told them that I would be completely objective. In all honesty I was slightly surprised by the results seeing that the HPS system had almost a 200 watt advantage. I know that one grow isn't a definitive conclusion but it does provide some some definitive information.
Appreciate the tip on the "white balance"I never figured out how to make that adjustment on my camera and get it to work correctly.
Thank You for the kind words and many good observations.
Keep it Green,
WD
Hi, Daiken, if you are asking the OP of this thread, he cannot answer you (and likely will never even see your question). The account's user-name was changed, it is no longer able to receive private messages, and it has been some time since it was active; that generally means the user has been banned.
PurpleGunRack
Well-Known Member
Old thread and OP left a while ago...
Just reach
, which can be a bitch in +4x4 tents when you have to water the plants at the back of the tent, only for the ablebodied though.If you have physical limitations a 2x4 tent is a much better choice
Use a long wand or crawl....
I see where you are coming from but this is not the case. I should of clarified myself better. Yes the plant was in a 5 x 5 tent but it never was larger than 3 x 3 area . So it actually was getting about 67 watts per square foot. Well above the 50 watts per sqft. These were single plants directly under the centers of each light. They were not scrogged, sog, or any other variant of growing.
Being directly below then helps, but you'd still have a lot of photons missing the plants when growing then in a portion of a larger area. That's why we generally advise people to light the space (and then fill that space with plants).
I agree, If you want maximum yield. What are your thoughts on allowing a plant to follow its genetic disposition for structure? If you look at the PPFD charts of most lights there is a "hot spot " directly in the center of the light. It is really prominent in most LED lights, seeing that they are more directional on the emission of the light that they produce. With modern day LED's you can easily reach the saturation point of a plant. If you push photosynthesis to the max, then you have to provided the "energy" to the plant for it to be useful. If you look at the natural process of a light cycle during the day it normally increases gradually and then intensifies reaching maximum then decreasing until the night. The shortest period of twilight occurs at the equator ( around 20 -25 minutes). Plants like to "wake up" and chill a bit before going to sleep. It is one thing that has always puzzled me as to why as indoor growers we basically throw cold water in a plants face when we turn on the lights, especially with LED's. I am more of a "naturalist " grower verses a production grower. So my perspective is most like different than most.