theherbalizor's Penetrator 345w Test

Well folks, I finally went and did it.... Broke from my Jewish traditions and splashed out. I spent some money, mullah, wonga - some dosh.

And got me a Hydro-Grow Penetrator 345w LED unit.

After seeing some very impressive pics posted by LEDgirl and some very promising starts to some independant grows I decided to have a chat with LEDgirl and see what these units were all about.

After some deep consideration and a very nice offer of a slightly discounted price - still paid a good £675, I finally have a nice, very bright Penetrator 345w.

Now as you can see, I owe nothing to LEDgirl. In saying this... This is not a free tester. The reason for discount was that of a medical one. So my testing will be completely unbiased. And if I can pull off results half as good as Boss, Tobor and few others then I will be a very happy camper and it will be money well spent. If at the end of my first 60 days I am not happy, then I will be trying out Hydro-Grows returns policy. But I doubt I will have to use that.... I hopes not anyway.

But before I commence with the show, please some civilities, if I may.

Please leave all science talk and anything relating to the fields of LED's until the end, or perhaps, if requested enough I will start a sister thread for these conversations withwhich we can referrence posts in this thread and others. I wish to keep my thread clean and easy to follow. I hope this makes sense. This is not aimed at ANYONE in particular.

Ok, so the setup.

At first I was a little shocked at the heat from the unit. Dont get me wrong its not going to burn anything nor even cause discomfort if handled after a days use. Its just not as cool as I thought - when contained in a tiny tent.

I decided to go for a DR80 to test this in. Figured the slightly smaller area will be beneficial. And at the moment I am using a TD160/100 fan extract on max setting with a nasty budget carbon (All to be replaced with a RVK125 and matching carb next week). Intake is another TD160/100 but on slow setting and then dimmed so as to keep neg pressure. Them shit carbons really do (sorry) suck the life from the little fans.

Temps at 12" from LED unit are 24.6 Deg c. And RH at 69 - nasty weather at the mo.

As to plants and medium etc. Well I was going to be running this in a 1 m tent with my run to waste system - coco with 20 or so plants no veg. But due to shipping delays (ups fault), those clones are now little bushes so decided to go another route.

I am using my Rez Chem 4 x Chem D's mother plants, 3 phenos. And a Snoe mom. All plants are about 3 months old I suppose and yielded a good 500 cuts between them. So I just potted them up into their final 6.5 lt coco pots, took a bunch of cuts and whacked them into the LED cab for a couple more days veg. Oh should add here that the plants had been previously in 3.4 Lt pots and under a 400w 8 strip T5 light array. In this same tent - turned on its side.

Now, I am just coming to an end of the flowering time for my first run on these Res Chem4d's. But they look to be Massive yielders. The Snoe reliably returns an Oz per plant with no veg from rooted clone - 63 days. This is from 400w HID - 600w looks more. So will be interesting to see what we get with the LED.

Now normally if I was going to be flowering out old mother plants under a 600w I would be expecting about 4-6 oz a plant. But that would be in a m2 tent. This is a 80 cm2 tent. And although this light is supposed to be the equivilent of a 600w - I am aiming for perhaps 2.5 oz per plant. That would give about a g p w. So time will tell.

And of course if I were to do this normally, under HIDS, I would be doing a little training but prob just leave them to bush. Here I am going to be scrogging them. So building a screen to handle these beasts. Will have that in in the next update.

Feed is my normal scheme.

House and Garden CoCo A&B
H&G Root Excel
H&G MultiZym
H&G BudXL
H&G Shooting Powder
Bcuzz Indi Coco Booster
Bcuzz Flower Stim
Superthrive
Hygrozym
Bactolife (Beneficials)
GGG (Beneficials)
Candian Express Superior Potash
AN Carboload to feed the beneficials.

This my long tried and tested and constantly tweaked feed. Feed daily from the bottom via the COCO's natural capilary action. Gives for bigger yields. And as we have major issues with PM in this area atm, helps keep RH down and its related issues.

I will be spraying with Eagle 20 (or our UK Equivilant - Systhane Fungas Fighter) at around day 7 of 12/12 and then later on with CX PMT as ness - hopefully not.

So enough jibba jabba, on with the show.

The Tent and setup. Note my way of dealing with the heat was to punch a hole in the wall and find the old fireplace lurking behind.... ah chimney.. good bye old hot air.

[imgo]http://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=21795&pictureid=458448[/img]

Dont worry that big 10 inch accoustic is not being used on this grow. LOL.

The LED light



The plants - love the pink glow to the images.. NOT. Really not a great environment for taking photos.



The Chem plants. Have edited these in PS to try an take away some of that over saturation. Look better, more black and white tho now. Future shots will be with light off.







The Snoe



Ok, so next update in a weeks time I suppose.

Thanks for watchin.

looking forward to see these results, i've seen a few grows of yours in the past and with your knowledge and experience i'm very exciting to see what you can do with these LEDs

Good luck Herbalizor, i'm tagged!

Good start mate, just tagging for now, but all looks in order

Hi th,

Nice pickup there. With your tent that's just about 50w/sq ft of LEDs.

It looks like there's several inches near the sides where the light intensity drops off from the primary coverage area. Is that accurate, or just how the pics appear? The plant heights seem to vary in response.

Cheers mate,

-SX

looks like you've got it figured out mate , good luck with the grow


edgey

Grabbing a seat for this one....i'm always impressed by your grows and I know no matter the light u will put on a good show with lots of info......Good vibez!!

Thanks very much people. Your all too kind.

I have played with LED before. But it was a fake 60w UFO unit. Dispite DWC pump failures and huge heat buildups from ambient temps, we still pulled around 30 grams of really good quality dense cheese nugs. So I do have semi hihopes for this.

At the end of the day, if it gives me plus of 1gpw then its worth it. If I get near on 1.5 - 2 gpw like some would have us believe we can, then I will be changing all my lights to these. I am not saying this is not poss, but my mind doesn't allow me to find these numbers poss. But time will tell. And if i do get 2gpw then I may win a couple more FREE 345w units. Happy days

sx646522 - There is a very slight drop off but I think this is most noticable where the door is open and allowing light to flood out. My next run, as per my original idea, will be over a 1m area with about 20 clones flipped straight to flower.

Whats up Herb....Yea i always thought that the leds would work great for a lil sog set up flowered from cuts.....pack im in there and get some fat colas! U have done a pretty good job of doin that already with your hid's. I have 2 of the 126 that i plan using with that method inna short time once we are moved into a diff place. Right now one is being used for veg and the other to supplement my 600 hps....pleased with the results so far. Hope u can get more than a gpw....Verdant does a great job using a mod scrog with leds too...if u are lookin for more to compare. Take care....

Nice!

Check my ledgrow, Im using 360w LED.

About the yield, I think its going to be hard to get 1g/w in that space.
I pulled out 0,85g/w in my last LED grow, with the same clone I usually get 0,5-0,55g/w under HPS..

/Peace

I've been reading up on LED for a few years now but the price is just to high and far to many say HPS still beat LED's however I think technology is moving forward at a faster rate so I'm still going to keep watching and waiting until the price comes down. Hope your grow goes well.

Thanks guys....

All looking good here. I have some update from day 7 flower for you.

I think I could have gotten away with putting only 2 plants in as have had to remove ALOT of growth from these, but we will soon see.

Will stop tucking and weaving in the next few days and start removing all the lowers.

Lookin good Herb.....that screen is really filling in nicely! Can't wait to see what its lookin like inna week or two. Quick question...u mentioned that u normally bottom feed your plants and i was wondering how u will go about that with the screen fitted over top? Take care

real amazing you get man, look nice grow , i'm curious about how they coming under the led so we can see the progress for sure, cheers for the great job!!

Looks very nice!

How are things coming along Herb?? Just got done lookin @ a thread in the journals section with a lumigrow led vs hgl and the user ended up gettin better results with the lumigrow...although I've seen Verdant G get more yield outta his 205 than he did using a 345w. So now I am more interested in seeing what u can do with the same light but diff style of grow...good vibez.

Some long awaited updates.

Definitely over vegged. I should have just put two plants in. I had planned to put these in 1m tent, and even then I think there would have been too much growth. But with some chopping back, lots of bending and tucking here are some day 24 shots.











And here is day 30 update after the last tuck session. Will take some more shots soon as now on day 35

lookin real good

tag

omg that looks realy good, and you dont use any other lightsource than LED? guess i better start saving up

Ok, so I figured as I am playing with my new camera and lenses, I would throw up some day 35 shots.

All looking great. Some people seam to think LED's are not capable of growing bud. Well this bud is super sticky, super dense. Has a lovely aroma profile. All comparable to HID grown bud, but more like mHal grown. The stressless factor.

Anyway, on with the show. Day 35