Lightning Confusion

I just read the sticky about how to grow, and I'm a little confused as to when to use the Metal Halide bulbs and when to use the High Pressure Sodium bulbs.


Do you use the MH ones when vegetating and the HPS when sexing, budding, and cloning?

Or do you use the MH for vegetating and cloning, and the HPS for sexing anf budding?

I dont know if it makes a difference but I'm planing on using a hydroponic system


This is my first grow so I want to get everything straight before buying equipment


Thank you in advance

HPS for flowering, the rest u can do w/Mh or T-5HO's.

And just to get things straight, is the flowering cycle is the same as budding the plants? (like what you have to do to determine the sex? and when you've grown your clones?)

budding, sexing and flowering are all in the same stage

you want to clone from a plant in vegging. the clone will be put into vegging.

Flowering=budding=determining sex= all brought on by making 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark, best done with a HPS light.

Vegging=growing= 16-24 hours of light per 24 hr period, best results when using MH light, also fluorescents work well.

Cloning can be done with a MH , HPS, or Fluoro, most would say use a fluoro due to its low heat output.

Oh so you want to clone from a plant in the vegging cycle instead of after you've, determined the sex? does that mean you always want to keep the mothers in the vegging cycle and only sex the clones?
(I'll most likely have two rooms so I can always keep one set in a vegetative cycle)

and with good ventilation would you still recommend the florescent over a MH bulb for cloning?


thank you very much for all your help

never sex a mother, only sex her clones

You want to find out what sex it is first, if you keep one branch covered from light by placing light proof bag over just the 1 branch for 12/hrs per day . once you actually have a bona fide female thats what you clone. you don't clone unknown stock, what if it were a male, you just wasted months of time.

The mother stays in perpetual 16+ hours of light a day ensuring it never flowers and can provide many many clones over time. My mothers provide fifty (50) 6-8 inch clones every 30 days.


Clones are always female, no reason to clone males they don't make bud.

Personally I do use a MH to clone, i also do not use a dome and several other variations on the theme, but I have 100% success everytime. Once you find a method that works for you use it. There is no 1 way to do this lil hobby of ours.

Would the MH bulbs be better for cloning if there was good ventilation or would you recommend just using the florescent?

would it be easier to just take one clone from each plant, and sex it early just to see what sex it was, that way you don't waste many clones and you can do it earlier?

If you have good ventilation and temps are kept in check a MH will work just fine, I use it because i have to, its also got my mother plants under it (430 watt MH). If you have a separate clone area then I suggest a CFL or T5 fluoro.

You can absolutely take a clone from each plant you are growing, clone them and then put them into flower to determine what the donor plants sex is. the only problem with doing it that way is the 1 month wait to clone and sex. if you do it the branch way you don't lose any time and a flowering branch will go back into vegetative stage in a week of 16hr+ light. Then you just clone the known females, throw out the males. with the clones you can start a mother and continue to flower the original donor plant. no time lost there at all, you get to have a crop and have a mother and have clones, all from just 1 plant that never lost a day of growing buds.

If your cloning technique is faulty, or you kill the mother somehow, well that could be bad, so take it easy. The mother plant can take some serious chopping, as long as you leave some leaves and a stem or 2 it will continue growing.

So for the cloning, I should veg them with a fluorescent bulb and when I'm ready to flower them I should just switch to the HPS bulb, and continuously leave the mothers under the MH bulb

Look, for vegetative growth, which is what your trying to get started when you take cuttings and try to clone them you can use any of the methods of light, fluoro, MH or even HPS. MH and fluoro (6500K) have more of the blue spectrum of light in them, that makes vegetative growth go faster, HPS has more red (2700K) light in it and that makes buds grow better because it is simulating a waning sun during the fall season. Any of them could be used to clone a plant, do what you want to do, but you dont need to spend $300 bucks on a MH light and cooling system to get clones. you could just put a $6 Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb in a table lamp and still get the same results. Its not so much the light that is going to gauge success, its pretty much all the other things you need to do to make clones.

Ok thank you for all the help