In the mid to late 1990's I started to get into growing Carnivorous plants.
I build a small table in front of a south facing sliding glass door to grow my plants on.
With the wife's permission, I also placed hooks into the ceiling to hang hanging baskets in front of the sliding glass door. The plants in this location only receive natural sunlight. I have no artificial lighting on these plants.
In the early 2000's when my collection of carnivorous plants really expanded and I needed more room to grow plants. I built stands to hold 10 gallon fish tanks to place plants in.
I used 2 bulb T-8 fixtures with 1 warm & 1 cool florescent bulb for lighting on each tank.
Most plants grew good under this lighting.
After one or 2 years growing plants with artificial lighting in the tanks, I really took notice to the growing cycles of my plants.
Plants growing at the south facing sliding glass door, receiving natural sunlight, had different growth cycles compared to plants in the tanks with no change in duration of the photoperiod.
This is when I started to experiment with the photoperiod of my artificial lighting.
I came up with a schedule and followed it for years;
January - 12hrs (program 5) 7-7
February - 12 1/2hrs (4) 7-7:30
March - 13hrs (3) 7-8
April - 13 1/2hrs (2) 7-8:30
May - August - 14 hrs (1) 7-9
September - 13 1/2hrs (2) 7-8:30
October - 13hrs (3) 7-8
November - 12 1/2hrs (4) 7-7:30
December - 12hrs (5) 7-7
I do admit the last 5 or so years I have not changed my photoperiod. I'm starting again now, reducing my photoperiod for my plants.
Now back to lighting.
As better bulbs came, I started to use T-8 Flora Sun bulbs in the fixtures.
Plants responded better to these bulbs over the standard cool & warm tubes.
As technology changed, I tried other lighting systems as well. I had a tank or 2 with T5 fixtures, using the Flora Sun Bulbs and some Current USA fixtures using compact fluorescent Sunpaq Dual Daylight; 10,000k & 6,700k bulbs.
I had very good growth with these lights.
Now it has only been 3 years since I changed most of my collection from CP's to cactus and succulents, mainly Haworthias. Going into my 3rd winter, so I'm pretty new with these plants.
A few years ago I stopped breeding Leopard Geckos and converted my 40 gallon breeder fish tank to you guessed it, keeping more plants. LOL
Again technology advances and what I have on all my tanks now, are Current USA Freshwater LED Plus Light fixtures. I have 1 fixture on each 10 gallon tank, and 2 fixtures on my 40 gallon breeder tank.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C7OTEVS/
Since Haworthias do not grow tall, something a year or 2 ago I did was to raise my plants up closer to the lights with ceramic tile.
I have noticed some plants show better coloration from natural sunlight verses the artificial lighting.
Here's a good example. I was growing this plant in the south facing window. The 40 gallon tank is my main Haworthia collection, so I moved the plant into this tank.
As you can see the plant getting natural sunlight has some beautiful color to it.
Now these Current USA Freshwater LED Plus Light fixtures do have the ability to adjust the color spectrum. I've never experimented with changing them other then what I believe is the natural sunlight color setting.
This may be something I play with in the future experimenting in a more blue or red spectrum to see if plants will color up more.
