[Maple_Flail]

Hey Ic Mag!

I've been looking for some info on how these things work out in the real world.

Has anyone switch over partially or fully to test? if so did you stick with it and what was your previous light rig and if you didn't stick with it what did you move on to?

Cheers

[Phaeton]

I do not use HPS but the title caught my eye.
All HPS uses ceramic tubes due to the corrosive nature of the salts.
MH uses quartz because for some reason it is the red wavelengths that are most corrosive.
Ceramic Metal Halide is just MH with extra salts for red. The life of a quartz tube with those salts was under a year. The ceramic used in HPS absorbed useful frequencies so a new ceramic was developed that could handle the corrosive effects.
These tubes are more expensive, considerably more expensive and account for most of the increased cost of CMH over standard MH bulbs.

"What was your previous light rig...?"
HID, then CMH, then LED for the main overheads. A combination of all seems to work best. Set up is accomplished with both color meters (red, green, blue, and UV) and a photon count PAR meter.
Fluorescent bulbs are still the least expensive UVB, and wide angle passive LEDs make the best side lights. Far Red is on separate timers and while not affecting yields it does stabilize the buds and prevent random seeds from appearing due to stress.

Not sure of why a company would advertise "Ceramic HPS" when all HPS is ceramic already.
Such tactics annoy me enough I do not follow up on companies with such practices. I suppose that is my loss.

[Easy7]

Not used one myself. I find the ballasted reflector unattractive with no advantage for the price and ugly looks.

A ballasted reflector that dials down, SE lamp, hps/mh would be nice. Never know where to put the ballast for a tent.

I think hortilux's game is a bit sad these days.

[Maple_Flail]

Originally Posted by Phaeton

I do not use HPS but the title caught my eye.
All HPS uses ceramic tubes due to the corrosive nature of the salts.
MH uses quartz because for some reason it is the red wavelengths that are most corrosive.
Ceramic Metal Halide is just MH with extra salts for red. The life of a quartz tube with those salts was under a year. The ceramic used in HPS absorbed useful frequencies so a new ceramic was developed that could handle the corrosive effects.
These tubes are more expensive, considerably more expensive and account for most of the increased cost of CMH over standard MH bulbs.

"What was your previous light rig...?"
HID, then CMH, then LED for the main overheads. A combination of all seems to work best. Set up is accomplished with both color meters (red, green, blue, and UV) and a photon count PAR meter.
Fluorescent bulbs are still the least expensive UVB, and wide angle passive LEDs make the best side lights. Far Red is on separate timers and while not affecting yields it does stabilize the buds and prevent random seeds from appearing due to stress.

Not sure of why a company would advertise "Ceramic HPS" when all HPS is ceramic already.
Such tactics annoy me enough I do not follow up on companies with such practices. I suppose that is my loss.

Thanks for the reply Phaeton, I hadn't thought to do a "deep" dive into the construction and actually properties of the different bulbs.

Would +rep if i could, this was helpful

I had initially written it off as spin from Hortilux, however i found the spectrum read out while looking for CMH brand spectrum comparisons and it kinda intrigued me seemed like too much infrared to be super beneficial but the description came across as a whitish light.. so ya the marketing seemed interesting but since i can't find much hands on use i can only assume it was what i wrote it off as. I was contemplating using it as supplementary to CMH main lighting

But it seems like sticking to my gut of just augmenting the CMHs with Fluorescents and LED seem to be the most straight forward and less BS

Originally Posted by Easy7

Not used one myself. I find the ballasted reflector unattractive with no advantage for the price and ugly looks.

A ballasted reflector that dials down, SE lamp, hps/mh would be nice. Never know where to put the ballast for a tent.

I think hortilux's game is a bit sad these days.

Ya i'm not particularly keen on having my ballast on the reflector, but IIRC those ballast on the reflector are on there for a reason, weather the reason is actually enough to justify actually having it there.. I dunno something about line loss and voltage frequency differential. I need to see if anyone has done or posted any tests based on moving the distance of the ballast from the light with these CMH type low frequency ballasts.