Why You Should Change Your Lights Every Nine Months

One of the big issues with hydroponics is always the grow lighting that growers use. Grow lights have to have the right spectrum for plant support. They have to have the right intensity to really give plants what they need for photosynthesis. They need to work correctly and be placed adequately to prevent issues like plant burning.

But what about grow light maintenance?

We don't often talk about grow light maintenance -- it's something that tends to stay on the back burner as we focus on things like reservoir maintenance, plant pruning and more. But maintaining lights is important. It's not just important to change their settings for preventing plant burn, or to set up reflective material to help corner plants get light. There's also the key project of looking at bulb intensity and making sure it's consistent.

Hydroponics experts can tell you that over time, grow lights can lose intensity. One estimate is that the average grow light can lose 30% of its lumens over the same nine months that it takes a human fetus to gestate.

Unfortunately, lots of growers think that they should keep running their old lamps so that they don't have to buy new ones -- they see this as an economic move. But in fact, after nine months, you're getting 30% less yields and you're running the same amount of electricity draws for your grow lighting.

In a lot of cases, it makes more sense to replace lights so that you're getting all of the brilliance that you bought and paid for. Otherwise, you’re throwing money away – and micromanaging resources is a big part of hydroponics. Good growers always look at value for cost, while also assessing how each component of the grow setup helps plants along.

In addition, you're going to want to select your grow lighting carefully. Choosing from metal halide or sodium bulbs involves looking at the factors that make up your grow space. You want to make sure that you have the right light spectrum for both vegetative and flowering phases. All of this takes a lot of careful consideration and that's why grow lighting is so important.

Take a look at what modern hydroponics retailers offered to get the grow light solutions that are best for your hydroponics garden. You can get great affordable kits to help put together the crop cycles that you want, to boost your success long term.