Has anyone tried an LED grow light yet? I've recently changed office space. My potted Myer went from getting 6 hours of bright sun to approximately 3 hours .... and seems to have shut down

I was thinking about buying one of those combo red/blue LED grow light panels and hanging it over my plant. I like the idea of low power consumption, no heat, and near 100% lightwave usage .... at least that's what all the sellers on Ebay claim.

Just wondering about the pros/cons ......

Well,
what sellers on Ebay claim Sellers want to sell, and if they sell a perpetuum mobile, well, there are enough who will buy it....

Light is a measureable power. Usually light is measured in Lumen, which show how much light is measured by area and given distance from the lamp.
That's what one should look about.
And light is done by transforming electric energy into light radiation. So we can measure the energy consumption by a light source, given in Watt, and we can measure the light output in Lumen. The Lumen per Watt ratio will show, how good a lamp will transform electricity into light.
But (!!):
If a have 0,2 Watt Power consumption, I won't be able to beat out a simple 2 Watt lamp, if the Lumen per Watt ratio isn't to bad at all. Because:
With the given power I only can create the light out of 0,2 Watt, and even with a very high output, like 200 Lumen per Watt, you only will squezze out 40 Lumens!

So most normal light bulbs have a lumen per Watt ratio of 20. Common tube lamps with the color of coolwhite, like Osram T8 840 reach up to 95 Lumen per Watt.
consider a normal 20 Watts Light buld with the bad factor of 10 Lumen per Watt will produce 200 Lumens, and the 36 Watt tube light with a Lumen per Watt ratio of approximately 75, you will have 2700 Lumens.
Consider 40 Lumens against 40 Lumens!
And Lumen is the only factor your plant recognizes! That's how many light will be there!
So 40 Lumens for your halogen Spot, even if it would reach triple that power, it would not gain the light bulb, and never match the tube light!

So what you need to out-beat the tube light, will be, if we consider the utopical factor of 400 Lumen per Watt effecticity and 0,5 Watts power each: 14 lamps!
That's well, because we only consume 7 Watt... But look right: It's utopical! Most LED reach only 50 Lumen per Watt, and spots have seldom more than 0,8 Watt power consumption... So we would need for a outbeating a simpe tube light over 67 LED spots with an over all power consumption of 45 Watts... so we consume more power, as with the tube light, even if we consider the electronic balast of the tube light with 5 Watts!

So LED needs a little time more, till it would outbeat our good tube light, and most tube lamps have a color, which forces a good and healthy plant growth...
and I haven't guessed yet, how much space the 67 LED spots need, compared to the single 1200 mm long tube...

So if you compare, power isn't all!

interesting

I tried the red and blue LEDs. It doesn't work at all for citrus.
Seldom growth, small and unhealthy leaves.

Tubes work well.

good to know , I "almost" was ready to buy one last year

I bought one of the "glow panel" red/blue LED lights last winter. total waste of money. I replaced it with four cheap 100 watt equivalent compact flourescents in some of those aluminum clamp on light sockets and it seemed to work much better. I had my tree inside all winter and it didn't get much sunlight since the window it sat in wasn't in the right location for that.

Many people use tubes, and have some measure of success, I, fior one reason or other, never have. I always use HID lights, normally along with providing root zone heat, both on container trees and in ground trees. Light and root zone heat produces up to 5 growth flushes per year. - Millet (841-)

Hi Millet,

What kind of HID lights do you use? I was at the local hydroponics shop checking out their goods. Most of the HID setups were in the $200 range.

Thanks,

Dave

I just (yesterday!) got my first citrus trees, but I've done a lot of indoor growing, mostly tomato and seedlings. However, back in late September I got a Dwarf Cavendish banana plant. It is growing under a 125-watt Red/Blue/Orange LED in a DWC hydro system. Doing better than any plant I have - adding a new leaf every week like clockwork. I also have a spare 400 watt MH HID light which I'm using for some basil and a lemon tree.

Mike

I have some experience with LED grow lights now and LED lights for other stuff. LED lights have changed a lot in the last 3 years and even the last year. The quality has changed dramatically and I suspect in about 1-2 years LED bulbs will be commonplace in houses (once cost comes down more). However, the "feel" of LED as mood lighting is far different from other lights. How does that translate to plant growth, its hard to say.

I know have 2-28 watt glow panel's above 3 trees, 1 banana, catnip and some other stuff.

http://shop.sunshine-systems.com/product.sc?productId=10

2 of those 28 watt panels is promoting a lot of growth. However, a year earlier I did buy 1 14 watt glowpanel and it didn't promote much growth at all. I would whole-heartedly recommend the 28watt glowpanel and that brand. There seem to be a lot of mimics on the market but LED lighting has some place for indoor plant growth.

Well , I still don't believe in Led Lights

Posting pic of my first lemon growing under LED lights, I don't know why I'm taking a pic of my tree with its first lemon but it brought a tear to my eye. Oddly I had a hard time getting the camera to focus on the lemon. At this point its probably the $300 lemon!!!!





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Does it get LED light exclusively? For how long has it been under LED lighting?

It has been getting only the 2-28watt LED lights for about 5 months now. I have them on a timer and turn on the lights for about 14 hours. So, since they are 2-28watt LED panels then it 56 watt total. I was also thinking about setting up some mylar too.

I am think of getting one. $122 on amazon but it is still spendy.i