LED Grow Lights for small Drosera Capensis plant indoors?

[victorhooi]

Hi,

I'm looking at growing some Drosera Capensis indoors for fun =).

There are windows, hence, there is sunlight, but it's indirect, and the location I'm thinking of is not directly next to the window.

I thought of getting some LED grow lights to help things along.

Searching online, the the Glow Panel 45 is meant to be quite good:

www.amazon.com/Sunshine-Systems-LEDGP45-GlowPanel-Light/dp/B001N4NKB8

And the Blackdog Led Grow Light's are meant to be good:

www.blackdogled.com/


However, these seem like over-kill - I only have two small plants (in 3-inch pots). And the lights are also fairly expensive, and quite high wattage.

I saw that eBay has quite a few Chinese-origin LEDs for fairly cheap - I thought I might be able to give some of them a shot? Are there any things I should be aware of?

For example, there's these 90W red/blue UFO-style ones for around $90:

www.ebay.com.au/itm/75W-UFO-LED-Hydroponics-Plant-Flower-LSRG-Grow-Light-Red-Blue-/151197986440


However, would that still be too much just for two small plants?

I noticed there's also smaller E27-based ones - for example - there are these 54W ones:

www.ebay.com.au/itm/PAR38-E27-18LED-54W-Coral-Reefs-Grow-Light-High-Power-Fish-Tank-Aquarium-Lamp-/221312195143

www.ebay.com.au/itm/PAR38-E27-54W-Epistar-LED-Growing-Plant-12Red-6Blue-Hydroponic-Light-High-Power-/350918095005

I could mount these inside one of those 60W E27 desk-lamps:

www.bunnings.com.au/arlec-85cm-60w-aura-desk-lamp_p4370575

What are people's thoughts on these?

Would this be suitable/enough for two small Drosera plants?

Or could I go even smaller (e.g. 15W LEDs) - or would that not be sufficient?

How many lux/lumens/PAR should I be looking at? Or put another way, what is the minimum wattage I can get away with, I suppose?

Cheers,
Victor

[fredg]

I'd go for the small E27 units.

I'm using those to overwinter plants in my cellar. There's quite a selection to choose from.
Last year I used 15W (5 x 3W)red/blue growlights over approximately 4sq ft for 10 hours. Temperature 6C - 14C.
This year I have installed 2 circuits in each unit and use 8W (4 x 2w) additionally for 2 hours in the middle of the timing. I'm also playing about with light combinations by fitting blue only bulbs and different wattages which is easy when you're just changing E27 bulbs.
My cellar has no natural light and this had proved quite adequate at the low temperatures. You are providing an additional light on top of whatever natural light is available and a covering small area so a small wattage should suffice. The bulbs are also inexpensive so you can always trial with exposures and wattages.

[sykosarah]

I use T5 HO lights of 24 watts. They are bright, perfect for drosera, and they will not rob you of all your cash. They are also super easy to set up and can last about 3 years. They even have different lengths so your plants don't take up more space than necessary. Just don't look into the light while it is on, it'll roast your eyeballs.