Any recommendations for Home Depot/Amazon LED lighting strips?

[Z_Y]

I just got a new 4" long rack and I need to get some more LED lights. In the past I used a marshydro tsl2000 but I heard I can get way cheaper lights of equal performance if I just shop for generic hardware store strip lights.

Do anyone have any Amazon or Home Depot strip light recommendations? Currently I run my marshydro setup at 100W to get around 400 ppfd, and it costed me ~180-200 when it was on sale, so I'm looking for something in the same ballpark.

 

[adnedarn]

I'm not sure how common they are as a whole- but a lot of us in the Carnivorous Plant Association of Southern Arizona grow all types of plants quite successfully under Barrina strip lights! Going only by memory it seems most of us use some type of blend of colors- in my particular setups I could not tell you that any one color works better than another. I use pinkish white https://amzn.to/4dl16zX paired with 5000k https://amzn.to/4fKAc6c or yellow-ish https://amzn.to/3yD0Ltc for almost all racks. (I do have just yellow on a couple terrariums for acclimation since I bought those in 2' and could use the whole pack between the two terrariums, and those plants are good too). For the 4' long shelves, just make sure you get the 42w each (252w per 6 pack) V shaped leds, which I've linked above. There is a single row option but they're quite dim.
Andrew

 

[Z_Y]

So I actually went to home depot today to try to see what I can get for now. I bought a couple 30W $20 4' led lights, which output 3000 lumen at 100 lumen/watt.

I did a test with my ppfd meter to try to aim for 200 ppfd in my 2' x 4' grow area, and it seems like I need to hang both lights around 5" from the plants. I feel like I'd need 3 lights though to evenly cover the whole area, for 90W total.

Compared to my grow lights though I'm not sure if it makes sense in the long run anymore. I used my dimmer on my grow lights to try to match the same ppfd at 5" from the plants, and I can turn it down all the way to 35W to get the same ppfd.

At 0.14$/kwh electricity cost, 15h light time per day, my projected costs are something like:

	3 shop lights	2 shop lights	grow light
Upfront cost:	60​	40​	200​
Yearly cost	68.985​	45.99​	26.8275​
Year
1​	128.985​	85.99​	226.8275​
2​	197.97​	131.98​	253.655​
3​	266.955​	177.97​	280.4825​
4​	335.94​	223.96​	307.31​
5​	404.925​	269.95​	334.1375​
6​	473.91​	315.94​	360.965​

With the added benefit of the grow lights having some resale value, and they're dimmable so I can turn up the brightness if the ppfd drops due to lower LED efficiency over time.

In terms of lumens, my grow lights are around 166 lumens/watt, so around 1.66x more efficient than the shop lights. I think some newer models have even higher lumen/watt.

It would really only make long term sense for me if I can somehow work with just 2 shop lights per 4 ft space. I think there were slightly higher lumen/watt shop lights at home depot too, but they were also more expensive.

 

[pearldiver]

I use some, don't have names, but one is cheap-ish, but always burns up the power supply long before the strip is gone. And of course, is only available as a set. Just looked, North American Aquatics. There is no standardization I know of, so you never know what you will get till after you order. One I have is so weak I use two on that terrarium. Hit and miss for sure.

 

[SubRosa]

I use a pair of 4' 5000°K shoplights I bought at Lowes to grow many of my plants over the winter. The lights are about 1' above the plants, on a shelf a little deeper than 2' from front to back.