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Kelvin and lowland nepenthes

Hey guy/gals hows it going.

In the chamber I'm building for low land neps I'm going to be using two 150 watt MH's. They are rated at 6500K. I know the plants will grow fine with that. What my question is what is the optimal kelvin rating for growing lowland nepenthes? Should I go higher? say 10,000k? or lower at like 2000k?

Also I would like to hear some of your guys experiences using different kelvin ratings with nepenthes.

Oh yea sorry for al the questions lately....I'm still learning. I guess you could call me an intermediate (intermediate as in my skill level of growing) grower  
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6500k sounds fine to me. Plants use both blue and red wavelengths so you want something balance but a slight shift towards blue is fine since your primarily looking for leafy growth.

Tony
 
I will say not to use anything like 10,000 K or more because that will be too blue (and dim). The higher the Kelvin rating the Bluer the light. The lower the K rating the yellower the light.

I put a 10,000K into my 400W MH and it seemed like the bulb never fully lit up, it was was very dim. This is groovy for corals who maximize blue light but it was too blue and not very intense at all for plant growing.
I think it was the book The Conscientious Marine Aquarist by E. Bornemann, or Natural reef Aquaria by same which stated that the noonday tropical sun was 5000 K at sea level on the Equator while Noonday sun at Chicago, IL was around 6500K. But what matters most to plant is that they have enough of both red & blue light and also the spectrums we humans don't see. Your bulb is fine but if you wanted a more exact color tone then go for a 5000K when you need to replace this one. Really I doubt that minor color shift will do anything detrimental towards your Neps...

It may cause you to adjust your cameras white balance when taking pics of your Neps is all!
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Hey Swords, it was Eric Borneman's book that said that. I realise that plants like the redder spectrum, it wasn't like I was planning on using a Hamilton 14000K bulb LOL just using the 10K reference as an example. I was just wondering if there was any secrete level kelvine that nepenthes would rather have....

So I guess I'll leave the 6.5K lamps in there. I don't like the look of he 5000K lights way too yellow for my viewing pleasure
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Yes, I feel the same way, the crisper blue of 6500K is easier on my eyes.:)
 
HPS lights make me feel druged, like my vision is out of wack. However the MH lights remind me of 2am trips to emergency room. Very intense brightness in the ER.
I like 6500K, nice rounded color spectrum.

Joe
 
This is a useful site: http://members.misty.com/don/f-spec.html  Look under the grow-lamp section.

I mean useful in that it gives a general guide to plant lighting and also covers the spectrum of many, many commercial lamps.  It doesn't give subjective experience for Nepenthes.
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I've had good luck with the 4100K Philips fluorescent bulbs (T8 form factor). I like the 5000K color temperature better, but based on what the website says, it seems that beyond 3500K with triphosphor bulbs you actually decrease the photosynthetically available light per watt.  I have a hard time believing that plants don't prefer a more full spectrum, but i'm not aware of the botanical actualities.  Maybe someone can clarify that part.
 
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