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Discussions about fluorescent, LED and other types of grow lighting for Venus Flytraps and other plants

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By Sander
Posts:  1226
Joined:  Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:29 pm
#208995
lighting wise, that should work great, but be carefull temperature wise. Cfls can get quite hot, and especially in a 10 gallon tank :)
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By VenusDoll
Location: 
Posts:  49
Joined:  Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:14 pm
#209023
Ok :) I aimed a temporary stand fan at it and the plants are moving slightly from the air current. Until I can get a better fan. What kind of temps inside the tank should I be wary of? I have a thermometer on the glass and another laying on the peat right under the light to make sure the soil doesn't get too hot.
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By VenusDoll
Location: 
Posts:  49
Joined:  Tue Jul 22, 2014 11:14 pm
#209123
I've only been using the light supplementally with natural sunlight from a south facing window for two days and my drosera have colored up a lot!
By Sander
Posts:  1226
Joined:  Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:29 pm
#209144
Could u post a spectrum of the light MBT?

It might be a little on the blue side and have never read about it anywhere but it might work :)
By BillMcEnaneyJr
Posts:  117
Joined:  Thu Jul 02, 2015 2:01 am
#234868
Hi, everyone,

I've rejoined the forum because I've missed you.

About four months ago, I bought a 135-watt LED grow light from http://www.blackdogled.com because it got excellent online reviews. Surprisingly, even my new Sarracenia Dana's Delight looks healthy under it now when most experts insist that those plants need to live outdoors.

The light works well enough that I'm planning buy another one for my plant cart's bottom shelf. Though the LED light may be a little pricey at $420, my "kids" get the best toys I can give them.

By the way, to whiten the purple light, you need to wear special sunglasses with green lenses.

Bill
By edman007
Posts:  121
Joined:  Sun Oct 18, 2015 11:35 pm
#259841
I've done lots of reading up on it, and lumens are very very useless for plants, the right unit for plant growth is PAR. The reason is plants use blue and red light to grow, they don't use [much] green light which gets reflected making them look green. And we essentially evolved to see what the plants don't use (green). Lumens is defined as brightness as it appears to the human eye, where PAR is defined as useful brightness as seen by plants, and if you're following my description, they end up being almost opposite units.

I explain it in more detail on my website and I got a calculator that is capable of converting between lumens and PAR linked there, but the result is you can't convert between the two without knowing the spectrum of the light, for incandescents and halogens the color temperature is a good measure of the spectrum, but for other lights (LED and florescent) it is NOT a good measure of spectrum. Also of importance, most cheap light meters assume a spectrum when measuring (they have a non-linear response curve with respect to the spectrum), for lights with very odd spectrums (like purple grow lights), this may make cheap meters useless as well.
By edman007
Posts:  121
Joined:  Sun Oct 18, 2015 11:35 pm
#260943
I've got one of those, yea, it will be fine, just be aware that it's a narrow spot beam, at a 1 foot height it only lights up a 10 inch pot. That light is freaking bright though, hurts your eyes if you have plants close to it, but the plants look black and dim under it. Right now I'm using it for starting pepper seeds, the leafs are plenty green and it's mounted at a 5 foot height to light up a single tray, I just put one plant that was under that outside and it got bad sunburn, so I'd say 5 feet is far too high of a mount height for VFTs, 1-2 feet is probably fine for VFTs, but I'd mount at 1 foot for stronger light.

The main downside is the purple looks ugly, your plants look black and ugly.
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