Greetings Bushy! I was terribly excited to see that you have your own forum here on this site, I was always fond of your input and wisdom to Overgrow.com and am glad to see that you're still active in the community, one way or another. Anyway, on to my question, a little while ago, I was looking at bulb performance figures and I stumbled accross some tanning bulbs. They had some really interesting stats, especially the super-fast tan variaties, some of which produced UVB in an excess of %9! Of corse, the other %91 is UVA which means it would certainly sustain a plant. Sadly, I've yet to find anywhere that lists actual lumen, let alone PAR, output; I suppose tanners aren't interested in that :tongue: What I'm wondering is if you know the UVB percentages of your average HID bulb, I'm very interested to know how these high-power tanning bulbs compare in terms of UV output. I assume that a super-high concentration of UVB would encourage accelarated tricome development, since THC is so UVB absorbant and cannabis grown at higher altitudes (recieving more UVB) tend to have a greater quantity of more highly developed trics. These bulbs appear to have rather excellent power output as well, squeezing up to 160 watts into a 59" T12 diamater tube. The only downside is that they seem rather short-lived, most of them giving up the ghost after 1200 hours, it seem their life is limited by the inner phosphor coating that is slowly consumed while they are active. Though not terribly expensive, I think because of this flaw they wouldn't be very cost-effective, but that doesn't concern me too much as long as they turn out supirior results. Because of this I was thinking of using them only for flowering, perhaps even only the later stages, or mixing them with floros. Its hard telling, some experimentation would be needed. Bushy, I know you've seen a lot of stuff in your day and have been in contact with many, many growers, I just wanted to know if you have ever heard of anyone trying to grow with these kinds of lamps. I'm all for grand experiments, but it would be a big investment on my part for it just to be a complete faliure. If nothing else, I would like your input on what kind of UVB output that normal HID lamps achieve and wether or not you think the supirior UVB capabilities (if they even are supirior) of tanning tubes would yeild a positive impact on the flowering cycle. I already posted a similar thread in the growing technique forum and I don't mean to spam, but I figured that I would get some extra exposure since its rather an odd question.
No, no, no. You don't grow with UV and although it has something to do with resin production that is only because it stresses the plants just as a sunburn does to you. Some breeders have used these high uv lights in addition to regular lighting but remember that these arent for growers. Stick to compact floro grow lights and metal halide or hps lights and you will do much better. BOG Glad you found me.
Ahh, I see, I knew that the application wasn't intended for growing and in many ways isn't suitible, but I didn't know if it had ever been tried before, I've never seen it documented. I've been growing under HPS/MH (dual-mode ballasts ) with a medium scale Irish & Webby style aero tube setup for a while now, I've pretty much got my nutrient regiment and everything else perfected, so I've been looking for avenues of experimentation. I've done some more research and it turns out that tanning tubes are powered with the same kind of ballast that industrial very high output 96" florescent tubes use, which I could procure cheaply from a friend who owes me a favor. I may still invest in three or four tubes to experiment with, just for fun, mixing them with HPS during flowering, maby only for an hour or two a day. I was just tenative with delving into it before because I thought the only way I could get into it was to buy a whole tanning bed and go from there. Thank you for the clarification on UVB though, I thought it had a direct corilation with tric output, but if it causes a lot of stress in the plant then it isn't nearly as cool as I thought it was going to be. Peace Bushy!
I experimented not long ago, 24/0 of high output (similar to that of equatorial regions) UVA/B for 4 weeks, just to see what would happen. First results were fantastic, almost an extra 50% of growth for the first ten days when compared to plants under white fluoro. Then it all went a bit fucked up, the leaves twisted, and multiple nute imbalances showed up. The cellular structure mutated and looked like it had been microwaved under a microscope. Growth stopped by this point. It showed to be a hermie at three weeks. Sure there were loads of trichs evident from a few days in and the plant literally oozed resin from it's pores, but the UV killed the plant dead in under four weeks. The plant looked like it had been stuck in a microwave for 20 mins by the time it died. It was a fun little experiment though. It might be worth using a tiny amount of uv near the end of flowering to boost final trich production, but other than that I wouldn't bother with it.
