Indoor Bonsai under LED lights.

kensei wrote:Ryan,

Which type of Onyx have you used: the veg (cool white) one or the other? I have noticed that Onyx uses only white LEDs, do you think it could be any advantage to Sanlight M30 approach (which uses mix of colors, I guess)?

Best regards,
Marcin

P.S. Great thread!

Hi Marcin,

I have just used the cool white veg version. I'm not familiar with Sanlight's LEDs, so I can't comment on that. I do know that the white in this light targets both Chlorophyll A and B though.

Ryan,

Thanks for the prompt reply. I was just wondering whether mixing LEDs makes any difference. On Polish forum there was one guy who used white strong construction LED light with good results as well (which is very cheap in comparison with Onyx). That would make all that color mixing a little bit useless, but I was just looking for some other evidence. I'd probably go with white LED, but plan to make the panel by myself (LEDs, power supply, radiators etc. are quite easily accessible...just a little bit of soldering).

Best regards,
Marcin

Ryan wrote:
Hi Marcin,

I have just used the cool white veg version. I'm not familiar with Sanlight's LEDs, so I can't comment on that. I do know that the white in this light targets both Chlorophyll A and B though.

Marcin,

Both the ONYX and the SANlight M30's are great units (tried both) they are just designed very differently in almost every aspect.
But i now understand that its the spectrum you are interested in for a DIY light and not the units themselves, so i will try and break it down quick to the best of my knowledge.

The spectrum of the SANlight units is alittle more "targeted" to better mimic the action spectrum, so the mix they use of top bin Osram chips should in theory have slightly better performance watt to watt compared with the Cree XM-L2 used in the ONYX, but like i said its all in theory.

If you are set on doing a DIY LED light then for simplicity nothing beats using quality white chips from ex. Cree, Osram, Philips or Nichia, the best white LEDs today have great all-round full spectrum and can reach up to (over?) 200 Lumens per watt if driven softly!! Top that with a 94% efficient quality brand powersupply and you have your self the best of the best right now IMO!

It will all cost you, but not nearly as much as one can think, so if you have the skill to build one then go for it, and please post your results here when done.

Dreamcast,

Thanks for your explanation. I am now investigating what would be the cost of building a panel with Cree LEDs (there are some plates available that you solder LEDs to which "looks" easy ). I have to make good research because sometimes the effort and overall cost is not worth it...

What I found funny is that there is a lot of information on LED powered light panels on cannabis grower's forum ...even though I personally do not use those pants, I was surprised with the knowledge they have on the LED technology. However they seem to target "the flower" part not roots or branch growth, which I guess makes red spectrum bias.

Best regards,
Marcin

Dreamcast wrote:Marcin,

Both the ONYX and the SANlight M30's are great units (tried both) they are just designed very differently in almost every aspect.
But i now understand that its the spectrum you are interested in for a DIY light and not the units themselves, so i will try and break it down quick to the best of my knowledge.

The spectrum of the SANlight units is alittle more "targeted" to better mimic the action spectrum, so the mix they use of top bin Osram chips should in theory have slightly better performance watt to watt compared with the Cree XM-L2 used in the ONYX, but like i said its all in theory.

If you are set on doing a DIY LED light then for simplicity nothing beats using quality white chips from ex. Cree, Osram, Philips or Nichia, the best white LEDs today have great all-round full spectrum and can reach up to (over?) 200 Lumens per watt if driven softly!! Top that with a 94% efficient quality brand powersupply and you have your self the best of the best right now IMO!

It will all cost you, but not nearly as much as one can think, so if you have the skill to build one then go for it, and please post your results here when done.

Marcin, i know exactly what you mean, both the medicinal and aquarium community's are way ahead of us indoor Bonsai growers when it comes to knowledge of this kind. I hope this will change and guess this thread still being alive is proof its heading in the right direction.

Its funny you should mention the red part of the spectrum being for bloom, it was my thoughts to, but in my experiences both Ficus and Schefflera's really love atleast the red dominant spectrum of the M30's, maybe even more so then the white only ~6200K light from the ApacheTech units.. i know everything one read online says the contrary and there must be more then some truth to it, but i can't ignore what i see with my own eyes, now i can't say that this is true to any red dominant spectrum mix, but SANlight's mix really work wonders for non flowering plant material, think Yvonne's results with M30's also confirm this, she even said her trees almost grew on par when being outside over summer, that says alot!

But for simplicity and a piece of mind it think all white LEDs in a higher Kelvin range is the best if building a LED for Bonsai, all this mixing of monochrome LEDs is to messy and kinda risky when building your own LED unit i think. You also get a much better distribution of the spectrum when using pure white LEDs only compared to monochrome mixes, especially up close.

I am very interested in seeing what you will come up with, i hope you will keep updating on your findings while researching LEDs and your DIY progress in this thread.

For whom it may concern,

I have just found Polish (read: cheap, 1 PLN = 0,27 USD) company that produces grow boxes in various sizes or made to order (guess what those are for with names like "Dr Joint"? ) nicegrowbox(dot)pl

I can offer some help in terms of translation from Polish to English just in case someone from this forum would like to order one. Looks nice.

Regarding my LED panel I am investigating something similar to Onyx, but DIY with exactly the same LED units and of a little less power (I would like to start small e.g. ca 15 LEDs).

Best regards,
Marcin

Kensei, those tents look nice and simple and price is nice as well, but can't find any reviews of them online, maybe you can be a "test pilot"?
I will myself very soon start testing a new design from HOMEbox that seams very promising.

Very much looking forward  to see you DIY unit when done.

Ryan, as you may already know i from time to time check your site "The Ficus Guy", and your last post made me quite sad, but i feel you!!
I have starting to also think in the same way lately, is it all worth all this work with Tropicals?... Are all those people bashing on indoor Bonsai right?... I guess it all depends on your living situation, work, studying and so forth, but i do feel you.. i hope you do keep at least a couple of trees and keep posting about them and your setup of the Forum and Blog.

I may actually have found a new favorite indoor Bonsai species, Crassula! they may seam to be bad material at first, but i think its just the opposite, if one find good older material they may actually be the best for people not having time to check on there trees almost every freaking day..
Have a few exciting Crassula projects myself that i will post about soon, but check in to it, google some Crassula Bonsai, could be perfect for you as a student, needs very little attention overall, very pest resistant, and water, well, not often at all.

Hope you will stick around friend.

Dreamcast,

Still a lot of work ahead of me. Currently my "panels" look like in the picture. I plan to make two of them. Each with 10 XM-L2 cool light LEDs running at 2,4 A (with some reserve I guess). That should give c.a. 77 W per panel. Changing power supply would enable the panel to run up to 100W per panel, but I want to know what is a temperature of the panel at 77W first. In terms of the grow box I think I will try to make one as well. You can easily buy the pipes for the frame and I will try to make the tent of transparent PVC foil. I would like to use some sun light and not relay solely on LEDs. That's the second stage however

Best regards,
Marcin

Thanks Dreamcast. For me I get just about zero growth. The trees haven't pushed out any new growth in who knows how long. They just start dropping leaves and it's frustrating. When I spend all this money on lights only for my plants to not grow at all, I get unhappy.

Ryan, i understand your brutal frustration... its incredible strange...  i mean they are proven quality lights by a respected Aquarium company that been around for sometime... and the spectrum is not very different from other Cool White light sources like CFL's and T5's that has been used for all kind of plants for a very long time, including Ficus Bonsai, there units spectrum is just alittle more "full" and intense, and that's just a good thing.... have you asked RapidLED about advice to what could possible be wrong?

Is this problem affecting every tree or just some of them? if the middle tree is doing better it could be that the light is to intense and you have to hang the lights higher.. or maybe angle them from each side to get a more even light distribution... i really don't have a clue...

Maybe they have gotten some kind of shock from the quick shift in spectrum from "purple" to intense Cool White? Ficus sometimes have a tendency to react to sudden changes with leaves drooping, if this is the case then they should bounce back with new fresh growth rather soon.

Are you sure you are not over or under watering the trees?



...

kensei wrote:Dreamcast,

Still a lot of work ahead of me. Currently my "panels" look like in the picture. I plan to make two of them. Each with 10 XM-L2 cool light LEDs running at 2,4 A (with some reserve I guess). That should give c.a. 77 W per panel. Changing power supply would enable the panel to run up to 100W per panel, but I want to know what is a temperature of the panel at 77W first. In terms of the grow box I think I will try to make one as well. You can easily buy the pipes for the frame and I will try to make the tent of transparent PVC foil. I would like to use some sun light and not relay solely on LEDs. That's the second stage however

Best regards,
Marcin

Sounds like a good plan! Looks like you know you stuff. How big are the heatsinks you will use for each panel? and will it be passive or fan cooled panels?

Ryan, i now remember Yvonne also saw pale yellow leaves and lost all leaves when she changed to the new LEDs, then the trees bounced back with new fresh strong growth, it can very well be the exact same thing you are experiencing right now?

Ryan,

I have to hurry up with my panels, I got exactly the same source of light as Onyx Veg (Cree XM-L2 cool light) to check if your problem is not (or is) linked to the light. I have some "growth less" jade (crassula) to test as currently in Poland is very cloudy (there is even some medical study that says that Poles get depressed because of lack of light ...I guess, if my panels doesn't work I would be one of those ). Hope Your trees will be fine after some break in period, otherwise we could both sit down and drink a good beer, knowing that we spent some money just to learn something, in the name of the progress

Take care and I keep my fingers crossed for your very nice trees.

Dreamcast,

My heat sinks are 20 by 25 cm with 5 cm tall ribs, hope that is enough to have only passive cooling. From my experience (I built two audio amplifiers, one 150W and the second 1800W) that should be far enough.

Best regards,
Marcin

Ryan, this is what Yvonne wrote when she had changed to LEDs, sure they where M30's with a different Light Spectrum, but that should not matter as much since none of these lights use any high amounts of NIR-IR or UV.
So its a most likely a case of shocking your trees with to much Light Intensity.

Yvonne wrote:A long time has gone since I posted last time.
The new lamps Dreamcast helped my to buy, was not just new to me, but also very much for the trees.
The setup appeared, to work nice, and I ordered two more lamps...strong white lights, one with a red tone, and a lamp with a blue tone.
They arrived soon after, and as I was installing them between the lamps I already had, did I see the top of all the ficustrees had turned pale yellow...something had to be done...
I lifted the 3 lamps up as high ower the tent as possible, and mowed them at he same time two of them to the sides, to keep them as far away from the trees as possible in the window.
As it was a very gray Winter without sun did I want to use the extra lamps, but felt the trees had to become better before I began to use them....they have become fairly handy when I take Photos.

The trees grew nicely all the time, and dont turn yellow any more, but they should not be kept closer to the light, so they have to be quit small, I can not allow the trees to fill the tent.
Also did they due to the new light Loose basicly all the old leafes, as they were growing, it was not a problem.
I gave me space to clean up the  trees, and make small changes...also did I cut the multitrunk far back.

How are the trees looking now? can you post pictures maybe?

I found the actual issue to be bugs. Some of my trees have scale, the others have mites. I have decided to start using a systemic to combat the little pests.

Good luck, Ryan,

I'm so glad I found this thread! I stumbled on it after reading Ryan's blog -- there's not a wealth of good, specific information out there about LEDs and indoor bonsai. I posted something like this in a comment on Ryan's blog, but he seems to be scaling back these, so I figured I'd post here as well.

I have several shohin style willow leaf figs and three fairly large dwarf jades (32" tall). Last year I wintered them indoors for the first time under artificial light (used to board them at a bonsai nursery near Boston). Based on research and an email exchange with Jerry Meislik, I went with a 600W metal halide system. Short story -- the energy costs killed me.

So this year I've converted to LED. After some research that seemed to mostly lead me to cannabis growers, I converted over to the Solar Storm 440 from California Light Works. When I first turned the thing on, I was a little surprised to see how pink the light was -- I was very used to my 6500K metal halide, but I decided to throw it into Veg mode and see what happens. I've had my trees under that unit for about a month -- the jades seem fine, but they're pretty hardy trees. My figs, however, are already showing spotting on the leaves and defoliating and looking a little unhealthy.

I know how to water, fertilize, recognize signs of pests, so I don't think it's that. And I also realize that willow leaf figs show stress easily and often recover. So there's a part of me that thinks I should be patient and see how the trees do once they adjust to the spectrum change. But reading this thread, I also wonder if I should bail on these warm lights and go with a cool light LED more like the Veg ONYX. I read Ryan saying he found his pink lights to be not "super effective." But then Dreamcast will point out Yvonne's success with warmer SANlight M30's. So it gets a little confusing.

This thread is quite deep, and I've not read every word, so forgive me if the simple answer to my question is buried in there somewhere. I also get it that the answer might not be so simple. I don't have vast amounts of money to spend experimenting, so if you were me and had some ficus trees and some crassula trees in an area 3' x 5' and had to choose one type of light LED source, which would it be?

funckdren wrote:I'm so glad I found this thread! I stumbled on it after reading Ryan's blog -- there's not a wealth of good, specific information out there about LEDs and indoor bonsai. I posted something like this in a comment on Ryan's blog, but he seems to be scaling back these, so I figured I'd post here as well.

I have several shohin style willow leaf figs and three fairly large dwarf jades (32" tall). Last year I wintered them indoors for the first time under artificial light (used to board them at a bonsai nursery near Boston). Based on research and an email exchange with Jerry Meislik, I went with a 600W metal halide system. Short story -- the energy costs killed me.

So this year I've converted to LED. After some research that seemed to mostly lead me to cannabis growers, I converted over to the Solar Storm 440 from California Light Works. When I first turned the thing on, I was a little surprised to see how pink the light was -- I was very used to my 6500K metal halide, but I decided to throw it into Veg mode and see what happens. I've had my trees under that unit for about a month -- the jades seem fine, but they're pretty hardy trees. My figs, however, are already showing spotting on the leaves and defoliating and looking a little unhealthy.

I know how to water, fertilize, recognize signs of pests, so I don't think it's that. And I also realize that willow leaf figs show stress easily and often recover. So there's a part of me that thinks I should be patient and see how the trees do once they adjust to the spectrum change. But reading this thread, I also wonder if I should bail on these warm lights and go with a cool light LED more like the Veg ONYX. I read Ryan saying he found his pink lights to be not "super effective." But then Dreamcast will point out Yvonne's success with warmer SANlight M30's. So it gets a little confusing.

This thread is quite deep, and I've not read every word, so forgive me if the simple answer to my question is buried in there somewhere. I also get it that the answer might not be so simple. I don't have vast amounts of money to spend experimenting, so if you were me and had some ficus trees and some crassula trees in an area 3' x 5' and had to choose one type of light LED source, which would it be?

Nice to have yet another enthusiast on board the "LED train".

Like you say yourself, there is no simple answer to your problem.. but it seams like some people do experience "problems" when switching to LEDs, especially with ficus species.
My advice would be to wait it out like Yvonne did, but only you really know your trees and have to be the final judge in this matter.
Would be fun to see some photos of your trees and setup?

When it comes to the SolarStorm i can't say much since i have no firsthand experience with it.. But looking at the specs it seams like a serious enough light with nice Osram chips in it, but can't seam to find the spectrum for the model you have?
Who knows maybe something in the spectrum balance of the SolarStorm is the reason why your trees are not well... do you have the UV light on?

If unsure of the light you can always use your 90day return policy and get a different one i guess.

If i have to pick just one best overall LED unit, then i think the most proven quality LED used for indoor Bonsai so far is the SANlight M30 Module with both me and Yvonne having had great success using them.
Yes, the spectrum is very "warm" consisting of White and different Red chips, but SANlight have found a good balance and made it work very well, and i actually think its rather pleasant to both view and work on trees under this light.


Hope any of this helps.

Thanks so much for your input, Dreamcast. Here is a screengrab of the SolarStorm 440 specs, which includes the color spectrum. (And no, I do not use the UV bulbs. They make it even more red than it already is.) Curious for your read on the color spectrum -- you know much more about this than I do.

When I look around for the Sanlight M30, it seems they are not available in the United States. Has anyone in the US got their hands on one?

I'll post a picture of my trees soon. Thanks for asking...

EDIT: Hmm. Image is not showing up. Will post specs shortly.

Here are the color spectrum specs for the Solar Storm 440:

Thanks, but I saw that specsheet already, what i mean is there is no "spectrum curve", this makes it easier to see how balanced the spectrum is.

Another thing that came to mind when looking at pictures of the Solarstorm is that the UV lights are tubes, you could change those for White tubes with the same Watts, this will give you a more white spectrum and ad more useful light for your trees.

Regarding if the SANlight M30 being available in the US, you would have to order them directly overseas from SANlight if interested and that would not be cheap in shipping, its a very good and proven LED, but IMO its not worth the high final costs involved to get them to the US.
In your case there are other lights like the ONYX for example, but who knows, maybe the SolarStorm will prove to be a very good light once your trees get use to the new spectrum.

Ah, okay thanks Dreamcast. Good idea to swap out the tubes with a cooler bulb -- I'm going to give that some thought. I'm also still considering the Veg Onyx...will keep you posted.

It's a little early to tell in my case, but I do empathize with Ryan who expressed frustration that he's been seeing "zero growth" under artificial light. I was very disappointed last winter when my willow leaf figs looked positively miserable by the end of the season indoors. I was using 6500K 600w metal halide, a set-up recommended by Jerry Meislik. In late April, I finally moved all my trees outdoors, defoliated the remaining leaves, and in three weeks they burst back to life with a full, beautiful canopy.

I should also mention, my dwarf jades all did fine thru the winter, though the metal halides seemed to wrinkle the leaves somewhat, despite the fact that the bulb was at least 24" above the canopy. I agree with Dreamcast: Crassula are amazing bonsai, virtually indestructible. And they can be stunningly beautiful. Always inspiring is one of my heroes, Jim Smith, shown here shaping a crassula, dwarf jade. Not so dwarf actually.



I chalked up my lack of success with the willow leaf figs to a lack of humidity. My humidity levels were hovering around the 30% level, which I know is terrible. I started to look into keeping my figs in grow tents or an aquarium with ventilation, but I grew nervous about introducing a fungus and decided to just keep them hanging on until the warmer months when they could be outside.

Seeing some of the pictures and set-ups on this thread inspires me to try and find the right combo that allows my trees to thrive indoors rather than just hang on.

Thought some of you might be interested to see these light boxes I built in my living room. They are not LEDs, but I've had good success with these miniature 12W T4 fluorescent tubes. Even with four tubes going it's still relatively low light, so you really only can get away with a low-light tolerant tree like Schefflera. They live in there all year round under 2 x 3000K tubes and 2 x 4100K tubes. I also wired up two computer fans to circulate some air for 15 minutes every two hours.

The first picture also shows one of my dwarf jades that I put under 6 tubes. That tree lives outside during warm months, but tolerates the lower light conditions fairly well.

Must consider myself rather lucky i think, i have from what i can remember not had any real trouble when switching light sources for my trees... could it be that my trees have always lived indoors without any sunlight 24/7 365 days a year?

Having tested many setup types for my trees i must say the i love the simplicity and functionality of Growtents!
But the "closed style" setup i have going now is the best so far for Ficus and Schefflera, could maybe be to humid for Crassula species?
Sure i get algae in the bottom of the trays and on clay pots after a couple of weeks, cleaning the trays 2 times a month and using plastic or real Bonsai pots solves this rather nicely.
Best of all! I don't have to worry as much about watering, should i forget a couple of days extra, then its not the end of the world, love that peace of mind!
I am now testing adding moss, it seams to work great and looks so good.

And, no fungus or such from what i can tell, not so far atleast!....
Even though Yvonne have been rocking this setup style for some time now with beautiful results, i still consider this an experiment and have not yet decided if this is the "perfect" setup for me and my trees.

But if i decide on staying with the closed setup type, then nice looking Terrariums/Vivariums is the next step, totally sealed and modified with water proof fans for air circulation and advanced climate control, functionality, design and looks in Symbios.

funckdren wrote:

Legend!