I’m finding that a great bonus bro. Even turned down to 300W it’s still way brighter than the 400W hps/cooltube it replaced. I would say it’s about as bright as the 600W hps that i tried but failed to deal with the heat from. At 450W it’s way brighter than that 600W but i can still cope with the heat most days. I cant wait to see how it does with this next coco grow 
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450-watts of LED is about equivalent to a 600-watt HPS. Depends on diodes, bulbs, reflector losses, etc. My brother is replacing his 400-watt HPS with 250-watts of SolStrips and killing it! Dropped his temps 10° F instantly.
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I bet it did bro. He will be able to have the strips much closer to the canopy too so much more efficient. I had to use a cooltube with the 400hps to get the same temps as i have now. The 600hps was too much even with the cooltube but it is a fairly small tent in a warm house. I’ve actually seen better results from a 400hps than from a 600 because of excessive heat. If i needed to light a large area then i’d go with air cooled hps & aircon but for smallish areas led is the way to go.
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I’m learning there is a too close with the strips. Not because of light burn, but they block the light to lower foliage when only inches away.
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I did wonder about that and i said to @anon58740919 that’s one reason i thought a mix of cobs and strips was a good idea. The other reason being cost at £40 for each solstick i could only afford 4 lol. Got my rig about 12" above the tops and they loved it until ph lockout meant they ran out of available calcium etc.
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Too rich. 
Are you whining over here?
I here some kind of attention grab or something, 
Plants look good you!
Keep seedin’
99
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lol nah just feeling a wee bit sorry for myself for ruining some lovely plants by making a rookie mistake, especially when i know better. That and my thread seemed to have developed an echo for a bit there
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Some good news, i did a runoff test on the missis autos and guess what, it was 6.1 so almost perfect as they are just starting to flower. Turns out I used up the last bag of that last batch on my plants, by which time it had sat for about 6 months in a warm room. Don’t know if that could cause the PH to go out though…
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Took a few pics to show the damage to my girls from PH lockout of Manganese and Calcium. In a soilless medium 6.7 is way too high. I probably wont take any more pics of this bunch cos i hate seeing them like this.
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The replacements are already on their way and all in coco. There are 5 satori in one lid and the other has 2 autos (sugar black rose & blackberry) and 3 purple badlands that @anon58740919 sent me. I did start 5 of them too but 1 didn’t germinate and 1 started then died on me, i probably took them out of the propagator too soon and it got a bit cooler last night than i expected.
Her larger autos are just starting to flower and looking good thankfully 
. They are the last that will be done in compost here.
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Is that after you switched to AN That you saw the lockout? Nice to see you got a few purple Badlands up. Another 2 mates of mine have popped 5 each with similar germ rates so it may be the beans. As I said when I sent them. They’re untested as yet so it be good to see them from a few different perspectives.
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Nah mate the lockout happened before i even started to feed em. Canna let me down with that bag and i got caught out big time. I’ll get half the yield i should have got from them so i’m very glad of her autos right about now mate lol. The mandala stuff goes off like a rocket but he boasts about that on his site. Cant wait to try em cos i missed out last year, all sold out in a few months and their most popular strain ffs. They could become very rich hippies on this one bro.
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I pulled that mandala far out plant cos it’s leaves went brown right into the buds and it started throwing out bollocks. A small sample says its a potent thing but obviously on the early side. It was a spacey smoke even though that wee sample was compromised by being microwaved at defrost for 7mins 
Anyway since the two i have left are also finishing way early and clearly cant use all that light i was giving them i’m doing an experiment. I switched the cobs off so i am just running the 4 solstrips at around 45W each. The meter says 190W cos i allowed 10 for driver losses. They are warm to touch but nowhere near hot. I got an average of 34C along the length of them AND it’s still nearly as bright in there as it was with my old 400hps/cooltube rig. It seems if i push the strips to 50W they get hot but 10 strips at 40 - 45W each would be a very nice future rig for my tent so that’s the plan going forward. I’ll purchase the components as and when i can afford to as usual
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I’m now running the 4 SolStrips at around 200W and with the cobs turned off they are staying warm but not hot. It’s surprisingly bright in there for so little energy being used. Plenty enough to finish whats left of the mess in there.
The latest runoff tests show the PH rising in her autos. One is at 6.4 now and the other is 6.7 ffs!. They are getting quite big and still looking very healthy but they aint been fed yet and that’s when things usually start going wrong. So today i grabbed some builders compost from the garden center and re-potted then into 12 litre airpots. I hate that dam compost but the plants do seem to love it. Levingtons John Innes No3. Full of sand, weighs a ton and sets like concrete but plants can get huge in the stuff and she wont need to feed them for a month or so
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I was not that happy with my rig, pushing too high a voltage through 11 cobs and i’m not sure mixing cobs and strips is a good idea so = the rebuild lol
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Fucking hell all the suspense and drama llama here. Get your LEDs out 
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Last pics of my poor plants under the rebuilt rig before they got the heave a few hours later. This tent is now full of new life though so not to worry eh
Finishing way early but there you go that’s lockout for you. Anyway the white chronic on the left smells lovely and sweet, almost like bubble gum. And the WW on the right aint bad either. Both have have plenty of resin so things could be worse eh.
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lol not really worth the wait @anon58740919. I liked her rig so much i made a slightly wider version for my own use. It’s 60cm x 90cm and hers is 50cm x 100cm apart from that they are the same except of course i used the molex cob holders on mine this time. Oh and i did away with the rails on mine this time to make it lighter
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Was still worth the wait. Again. Execution of your work is top notch. They don’t look like they finished all that badly? Those molex holders make the job eh. Glad I found them before I sent gaz light out
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Cheers bro it was a little rushed but it’s very functional and much safer being fully double insulated and at a lower voltage. Still very bright even though it’s limited to 250W max now, i couldn’t use my old rig with everything at maximum anyway it was overkill 
I would have run those babes for at least another 3 weeks if they hadn’t got lockout issues and probably yielded double but i aint greedy and they are potent. Had a wee nuked sample lol
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