Please recommend growlights!

[Lea]

Hey guys, I am back again with new questions. Some of you may remember me asking about starting seeds in the summer and good Substrate. Thanks to you, i have cute baby astros and ariocarpi.
So now it is time for me to learn about grow lights. I have done some research online, but it is Kind of confusing with all the numbers and lumen and Watt and whatnot.
Additionally, amazon lamps don't have numbers like that in their description, so i don't even know if those would be sufficient.

So I would like to know what lamps you are using. I would like them to be cheap, but of course quality goes over price!
The lamp should be available in Europe. And i would prefer normal light colors, like cold white and not purple.

[gemhunter178]

So the thing about the purple color is it's a bit more efficient (more of the light produced can be absorbed by the plant), but I get that it's an eyesore.
My first grow light setup was made with cold-white (7000K or so, daylight) LED 'bars' that had 30 or so LEDs per bar. The process of getting them to run is a bit more involved than most people would prefer (we bought aluminum bars for heat sinks, wired them all, etc.) but when we were done, we varied how long the lights would run for with less concern for how bright the thing was (though, it has to be sufficiently bright that you don't have to run it for 24 hours.)

Also, especially since you're growing Arios, I find that they really enjoy the heat and giving them a reflective, insulated case would both increase light and raise the temperature a little (~30 C seems good, though my Astros are in a slightly cooler section of my setup).

I don't have much experience outside of that, though I did buy these grow lights for my air plants. They run for ~9 hours a day and seem to keep them growing well (including more full sun varieties such as Tillandsia tectorum) The lights are very warm white though. IMHO, they fit better in a room (cool white makes my room look more like a lab or some other cleanspace)

You could always adjust them to run longer or shorter depending on etiolation or stress (Arios will tend to turn dark and reddish before they burn)

Hope this helps!

Edit: typo/word left in

[greenknight]

Doesn't have to be a special grow light. I have one that's just a cheap clamp light that takes a standard E26 bulb (the brand is not important):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001K ... UTF8&psc=1

I put a purple led grow light spotlight bulb in it, but I used it for a while with a 13w CFL bulb, which worked fine - just mounted it closer since it wasn't a spotlight and the reflector doesn't concentrate the light that much.

White led bulbs that would fit that are available everywhere.

[Lea]

Thank you guys a lot for your help! I will definetly check out some Hardware stores. I bet they have something that fits

On another note, now that we're at it. I have a very young drooping prickly pear and wanted to ask if there is something i should pay attention to with this species.
Oh well, i THINK it is one. It was a shriveled up leaf from a Hardware store that took root. Now it has its first new growth. Surprisingly, the new spines are almost pink. The old growth looks like drooping prickly pear though. Oh well, maybe i should open a new topic for this. Lol

[RichR]

I've been using eight T5 Agro fluorescent lamps (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N5 ... UTF8&psc=1) for four years with my seedlings (over an eight square-foot area) and they produce a lot of light, maybe even too much for some seedlings because they are red. They produce quite a bit of heat too, which can be a good thing in winter but also a bad thing in summer unless there is good air circulation. I use a fan to keep the heat from the lamps moving in summer. The light is pure white and makes your plants look and photograph great as well.