What's new
  • Please note members who been with us for more than 10 years have been upgraded to "Veteran" status and will receive exclusive benefits. If you wish to find out more about this or support IcMag and get same benefits, check this thread here.
  • Important notice: ICMag's T.O.U. has been updated. Please review it here. For your convenience, it is also available in the main forum menu, under 'Quick Links"!

Can anyone share some experience with the hortilux Ceramic HPS?

Maple_Flail

Well-known member
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 :thank you:
 

Phaeton

Speed of Dark
Veteran
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

Active member
Veteran
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

Well-known member
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 :D

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

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.
 

mcnasty

Member
i have one, I finished one flower run off it so far and it seems to have produced frostier and denser buds than under my 1khps, but not as frosty and dense as under my cob leds. It doesn't produce any extra heat over a normal 600w hps really. Now that I think about it it gave me very similar bud to my 630w cmh middle of the road between hps and led in all aspects.

If I was in the market for 600w hids, I would get it simply to be able to use that ceramic bulb. The ballast also runs super hps and the blue bulb, Now if that ceramic bulb ends up being able to run on any electronic ballast then there would be no reason to stick with the hortilux system, they claim it wont run on other ballasts, I dont have another eballest to test it so I dont know.
 

Maple_Flail

Well-known member
not yet, still got my eyes to a few feeds to see if they pop up.

I've seen the odd one on provincial kijiji, but never fast enough or close enough to grab it.

the Theory behind them (the far red ness) is been tested and is proven benifical, with caveats (caveats being in vegetable crops so take grains of salt)

Ihorto has released two more versions IIRC, both DE retrofit bulbs for the 600/1000w segment. weather they've hit shops yet.. I ain't got not clue.

Local shop isn't an Ihorto distributor, he is likely going to mainly offer quantum boards and the typical other brand HIDs.

I'm honestly waiting for someone to do a modern comparison with the new DE bulbs vs the modern standard, DEhps, CMH and LED variations.
 

Rembetis

Active member
I like the Hortilux bulbs so I bought one when they first came out. I really like the spectrum it has. I didn't find it to be a white light as someone mentioned. Its more yellow like sunlight. I've had great results on two runs now. I do have to swap it out when temps get warmer outside. They do put out more heat. I run mine in an air cooled blockbuster and the temps in the tent will get hotter than I want. When that happens I switch back to my Eye Blue M H
 
Top