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UNIT FARM UF1000 Grow Light 4000K Full Spectrum LED Grow Light, 60W Seedling Grow Lamp for Indoor Plant, 2x2FT Microgreens Clones, 1x1FT Flowering Fruiting?
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I got one of these recently because it was cheap and I needed something for a 1x2 space. The driver is separate from the panel so it can sit outside the tent and the panel can be mounted straight to the ceiling, and the panel gets warm but never too hot to touch so it won't increase temps too much.
How much is that? Those lights tend to put out a lot of heat, I’d go with a qboard. Here’s a link for a discount on 1k (equivalent) LED Grow Light, UNIT FARM UF1000 LED Grow Lights Full Spectrum Hydroponic Grow Light 2x2FT Coverage OSRAM Diodes Detached Driver Grow Lamp for Indoor Plants, Include Dim IR for Veg Clone Flower https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JCD11P2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glc_fabc_rUj9FbS9JEXKX super lite, barely any heat, lights up 2x2 area great! Burple lights. Don’t waste money! Amazon will let you return it. Just my opinion after having wasted money in burples.
im not sure what the exact suggested PPFD is for loph. but someone here will know. you can use the PPFD heat map to calculate distance.
here heat map PPFD
also. cumulative light is what matters. so its not just how intense the light is and how far away, but how many hours a day it is running
im not sure what the exact suggested PPFD is for loph. but someone here will know. you can use the PPFD heat map to calculate distance.
here heat map PPFD
if you look at the pics. there is a ppfd map. ppfd
looks like center of the panel @ 12" is about 600ppfd. for adult tricho, that is about what you need minimum, though they can handle considerably more. i have many of my adult plants in 800-1000ppfd. some of the tips are probably in 1200ppfd or more and they are starting to discolor and turn light green/yellow because its exceeding the upper limits.
so for best growth i would hang the panel within 12" of the plants. since only the center of the panel is 600ppfd and the sides are 200-300, if you have multiple plants, i would rotate their position once a week so the each get turns being in the maximum light.
you can get a bit more instensity by hanging the light less than 12" away.
i would put more than maybe 3 adult plants under a UF1000.
you can also make up for a lower intensity light by runming it more hours. the total cumulative light is what matters. so do an 18hr ON and 6hr OFF light schedule.
that is the maximum though. trichocereus are like batteries. they store energy during the day and actually physically grow at night. so without a dark period, they will actually have less growth.
The Unit Farm series of entry level grow lights will make your plants happy. 60 watts for $30. I bought & like the UFL3000. Paid $72 Amazon made a pricing mistake.
meh... kinda. for sprouting seeds. yes, probably. anything over an inch or so, they are going to be starvinv for light
for only $10 more , you can get a REAL light that can grow an actual adult san pedro. with rated lighting output charts provided.
i think you are going to be dissappinted if you try to use s bulb like this. anything over an inch tall is going to want stronger light and start etoliating. also, because its a single bulb, its going to be very directional and you wont be able to cover many plants.
the cheapest legitimate decent quality grow light i have found for trichocereus is this one. its a LED light panel that puts out about 500ppfd at the center from a 12" distance. this will actually sustain an adult plant too. for seedlings just back the light off a bit further.
i have 2 of the larger versions of this light (the UF2000 & UF3000) they are good lights and actually provide the rated amount of light promised.
my 2 cents.
Its not 1000watts, only 135 watts, the blurple lights aren’t very efficient. I think it’s the same light my b.i.l. has, his buds were pretty fluffy on his first grow, but he doesn’t listen to me. Better off with a quantum board with primarily white lights. I’m a fan of Unit Farm, you can get a much more efficient light $60 for a 100watt, $120 for a 200watt. IMO UF is one of the better budget lights.
https://www.amazon.com/UNIT-FARM-Removable-Hydroponic-Microgreens/dp/B08JCD11P2
well... i wouldnt mind being the size of an ant, finding a giant pill of MDMA that someone dropped and spending a week or two partying in your miniature rave box.
but for growing san pedro, probably not ideal. you can probably sprout seeds in it, but by the time they are 1" tall, they will want more light. full size adult trichs will straight up die with this little light. they need massive amounts (think about what a cannabis grow room looks like. ...something like that). also, full spectrum (normal "white") light is best.
if you want to have enough lighting for a few good size plants without going broke, buy one of these for $39 on amazon.
i use the UF2000 to grow mature seedlings and a few adult cactus. the UF1000 is under $50 and should perform similarly, just covering less total space.
for germinating seeds, i use something similar to the light you linked to, but full spectrum "white light" and with slightly larger screw in style bulbs.
if you just want to sprout seeds, you can probably get away with the light linked.
If you have any desire to grow larger cactus. anything over a foot tall or 1" in diameter, i would strongly suggest spending the $50 for a legit LED panel grow light.
UNIT FARM Full Spectrum Plant Grow Light UF1000 LED Grow Light, Hydroponic Growing Lights for 2x2FT Microgreens Vegetable Succulents Houseplant, 1x1FT Stealth Seedling Grow Lighting (Power Draw 60W) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JCD11P2/ref=cm_sw_r_u_apa_glt_fabc_8FEHYTKGTJH6YYX4XENW
It is probably cheap enough to try, but do not pump expectations up too high. It may indeed consume 150 watts, However that will not benefit plants to the same degree as LED's specifically designed for growing that draw the same current. They will have selected LED's for a white light appearance in its intended usage, which is as a shop garage light. And it probably wasn't a very critical choice such as would have been made for living space lighting. Essentially, some significant part of the power will go into a portions of the spectrum that are not the most valuable for plant growth. (Plants do use nearly every part of the visible spectrum, but for some portions, the use they make is minor.)
Is it cheaper than a "real" grow light? I think that can only mean to ask if it will provide the same benefits for a lesser price. Without a lot of technical information about it, I don't think it can be said to be cheaper. Take a random example that I happened upon:
Claimed 60 watts consumption and price more or less consistent with that. I would be inclined to take them at their word for that and the spectral output, since they no doubt derived that from the LED maker. Their claim of 12,000 lumens is probably right, so far as such claims go. But lumens is a poor measure for growing. Truly useful measures, however are complex and require costly equipment.
Now there is argument about "blurple" grow lights versus "full spectrum" lights. I keep a high index of suspicion about what makers say, because they're judgments are swayed by LED costs. Is a "full spectrum" light with a plot that looks a lot like standard "white" LED spectra better than a blue/red grow light? I don't know. I do know that both seem to work when appropriate light levels are provided.
One factor is the red and blue LED's are cheap to produce. What does that mean? Could be many things, but one of them could be how much power per dollar is provided. The spectrum can actually be tuned for different optimized effects on plants according to plant and growth stage, although not many of us bother to vary the spectra for that purpose. We are mostly satisfied to provide light we have found produces acceptable performance.
That light no doubt produces, to one degree of another, all the colors of light fundamentally essential to a plant. The question is how many and how closely they need to be to be effective. And how will you know? Inadequate light reveals itself through spindly, overgrown plants reaching for light that's not there. But how can you judge to lesser degrees of effects?
I think we can say with reasonable confidence that some power is essentially wasted on colors of little use to the plants. And we cannot say how much. It may well be that the 60 watt grow light benefits the plants more than the 150 watt garage light. And we know nothing about angle of incidence, where the light it going. We might reasonably assume they designed to throw light as wide a possible to reach corners of the garage. That is not what we look for in a grow light. We want a light where the design puts the light into a defined area with a known variation of intensity across it.
My personal take:
Hydro growing requires more than enough time, work and attention, sweat equity, as well as dedicated space, electricity to run pumps (not trivial for large grows) and other equipment, even if you can adapt cheap stuff like buckets.
Given all that, plus the expected service life of LED grow lights, consider this:
Assume we use three of those lights, perhaps 500 watts actual. That's about 6.5-cents per hours. Times 12 hours is 78 cents a day or $23 a month. Or $280 a year.
If the lights last ten years, about right for LED lights operated 12 hours a day. That operating cost of $2,800.
The difference between this 150 watt unknown and the highly regarded 150 watt Mars TS1000W is $150 versus $27. Net difference $123. Spread over ten years, $12.30 a year. That's less then 5% of the operating cost, which is the same for both.
When I contemplate all the planning, effort, and costs or growing, there's no way I'm going try to go cheapo to to save $12 a year and have no confidence that I'm even getting anything like the same benefits.
Or something else from their stable or from Spider Farmer. There are ways to go cheap and effective in hydro. Lighting is not one of them.
The best I can tell you is that (1) grow lights are generally fairly intense, and (2) they emit a lot more blue light than common LED task lights. This is just for illustration. This grow light consumes 60 watts.
https://www.amazon.com/UNIT-FARM-Removable-Hydroponic-Microgreens/dp/B08JCD11P2
Now, as LED lamps go, that is quite strong. A very bright task light of the sort you would use with a drafting table is typically about 30 watts.
I don't know what the lumens output would be, but it would be way, way over 1000. 60 watts LED is going to be very roughly 7500 lumens.
You could probably put one like this into a common socket. At 24 watts, very roughly 2500 lumens. The maker says 2130 lumens,
https://www.amazon.com/SANSI-Spectrum-Hydroponic-Greenhouse-Houseplants/dp/B07BRKT56T
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