Enough artificial lights for phals and oncidium?

[Mercurianmad]

Hi guys. I’m trying to get all of my plants off of the windowsills and onto one shelf.

Here is a picture of the shelf at the top are three small fig trees. They’re dormant obviously. And they need full sun. On the middle shelf are my high light orchids, cattalya, vandas and cymbidium. On the bottom shelf on my low light orchids, phals and oncidium. Is this artificial light producing enough light for my phals and oncidiums on the bottom shelf. I can’t dim it because my orchids on the middle shelf need the high light.

The last picture is natural light, without the artificial light

[Mercurianmad]

Here’s the finished set up. I don’t want to burn my orchids.

[Orchidtinkerer]

Hi, looks ok to me but you just have to keep an eye on them for the first week.
I recently set mine up and within 3 days one closest to the lamp went a bright purple.
I've had purple before but this loooked like the plant had been dipped in purple paint lol. Far too bright - but I was mnitoring it and luckily no damage done, if I had left it any longer I would have ended up with light damage.

To help judge, you need to tell us the wattage of your light fixture so we can work out how strong each of the 3 lamps is and at what distance they are from the plants. I think you should be good but you might have something a lot stronger than I am guessing.

[Ray]

I would not call oncidiums “low light” orchids. I’ve always growth them about halfway between phals and catts in light intensity.

[Mercurianmad]

Those 3 light combined are 150 w with 350 LED beads total. They produce 800nm of full spectrum light together. Right now the intensity is turned all the way up.

---------- Post added at 09:35 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 AM ----------

I can also angle it so it predominantly hits the oncidiums and not the phals. At the moment I can only spare one of the 3 light heads to illuminate the bottom shelf

---------- Post added at 09:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:35 AM ----------

The lights are 5.5 inches away from the vanda on the second shelf, 6” away from the cattalya, 6-8 inches away from the cymbidium, and on the lowest shelf 10” away from the longest oncidium leaf, 14” from the smallest oncidium, 18” away from the closest phal

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Mercurianmad

Those 3 light combined are 150 w with 350 LED beads total. They produce 800nm of full spectrum light together. Right now the intensity is turned all the way up.

I think you've got your units mixed up. 800 nm is a wavelength in the infrared range (heat)

[Mercurianmad]

Oh dear I’m sorry. To be honest I don’t understand any of these terms: watts and whatnot. I’m just copying them off the Amazon website where I got the light. But thank you so much for the correction: it helps me learn a little bit more about lighting them.

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Mercurianmad

Oh dear I’m sorry. To be honest I don’t understand any of these terms: watts and whatnot. I’m just copying them off the Amazon website where I got the light. But thank you so much for the correction: it helps me learn a little bit more about lighting them.

Do you have a link to the lights? Maybe we can "shed a little light" on the specs.

[Mercurianmad]

Sure! Here’s the link for the light: Grow Light with Stand, LED Grow Lamp for Indoor Plants, Tri-Head Sunlike Full Spectrum 150W 315 LEDs Plant Light, Tripod Stand Adjustable 15-47 inch 3 Amazon.com

[Orchidtinkerer]

All sounds about right to me...

With these Amazon LED's you need to be aware they are always marketed as 3x as much as their actual power draw.

So a 150W lamp will draw 50watts. If you read the reviews for this lamp one person who measured the draw reports each light uses only uses 10watts (30watts in total).

10 watts can be strong or it can be too weak depending how far it is from the plant, I know it sounds like little, the good news is it doesn't cost much to run it and the those distances you have mentioned I think they are good.

The purpling I mentioned happened under a 15 watt led.

I use 3w-8watt here myself mostly.