Looking for light options, help!

i used to always say that nothing good comes from fluroes until i seen my mate pull some of best weed around from them, then again he only had 2 plants that were small and it took a long time, theres no doubt that hps packs the real punch in growing , a while back i did the maths to work out how many fluros u would need to match the luemn output of a 600w hps and i think it was 30 fluros or something ridiculous, hps is the way to go, i gather from wot ur saiying heat would be a problem so 600w is out of the picture but a 250w or even push it to a 400w hps and u would blow them cfl's out of the water, maybe a 250 in the middle with the cfl's around it? vedge them under cfls then turn your 250w hps on when u switch to 12/12 sounds sweet to me, i would rly recomend buying an orange/red spectrum bulb there specific to the flowering stage [u prolly kno this]
you sed you cant run a fan 24/7 otherwise id recomend a 600w cooltube they steal ur light a bit [annoying] but keeps heat away i ended up buying 2 600w cooltubes for a 1.2m by 1.2m tent coz of the light they steal but heat is at 77f so its worth it, in one cooltube i have a red/orange spectrum bulb and on the other i have a multispectrum bulb the side with the red/orange bulb has FAR bigger denser buds, sorry if i was babbling wanted to make a point about making sure u get the red/orange bulb

Newz682 said:

The question is, if I am spending this $$, should I maybe instead consider spending a little more (not easy at the moment) and get something better/different which would still allow me to use the existing fluoro setup I aready have but would also give me more bang for the $$ and future grows then adding the CFLs I mentioned above?

I do have sort of a concern with potential heat removal since I cannot run the air 24/7 for various reasons.


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It's just a matter of what you want in terms of yield and what you can spend. HID lighting you'll get more yield. But only you can decide what you want to spend and how far down the rabbit hole you want to take your hobby.

Compact fluorescent bulbs are the least efficient, putting out the least lumens per watt when compared with other forms of horticultural lighting including other fluorescent fixtures (such as T5's, T8's) and high intensity discharge lamps (metal halide, high pressure sodium).

If you need more affordable lighting and don't want to worry so much about the lights heating up your room then fluorescent lighting is a viable option, but there are more efficient alternatives to compact fluorescents. The most efficient fluorescent fixtures are the four foot T5's and the eight foot T8's. Both of these fixtures should be able to put out 98 lumens per watt, while the most efficient CFL's get you just about 66 lumens per watt.
You can hang T5/T8 fixtures vertically to shine additional light directly on the sides of the plants/lower branches, so they make for excellent side lighting.

HID lights are still the most efficient (aside from unaffordable LED lighting) in terms of lumen output per watt, and probably put out more usable or photosynthetically active light (depending on the bulb manufacturer, bulb and ballast wattages). Higher wattage lamps are generally more efficient and this is true for both Metal Halides and High Pressure Sodium bulbs except that in the case of HPS the 600 watt bulbs are slightly more efficient than the 1000 watt bulbs. Metal halides also appear to be less efficient than their high pressure sodium counterparts, in terms of luminous intensity. However, Luminous intensity as measured in lumens is a rather subjective measure so far as plants are concerned, because plants respond to a specific portion of the electromagnetic spectrum; and certain wavelengths of light are more usable than others or otherwise simply more conducive to certain stages of growth than others (e.g: vegetative or flowering). While metal halides put out less 'lumens per watt' than a high pressure sodium of similar wattage, more of the lumens it does put out are photosynthetically active or able to be used by the plants for photosynthesis.

glShemp said:

It's just a matter of what you want in terms of yield and what you can spend. HID lighting you'll get more yield. But only you can decide what you want to spend and how far down the rabbit hole you want to take your hobby.

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Amen Brother! I am still growing with my original 400 watt HPS magnetic ballast. I have thought about upgrading but it continues to get great results with creative pruning along the way. I had to rebuild the ballast about 6 months ago and it cost me $47.00 for a new Igniter & Capacitor. It should be good for another 5-6 years. I sometimes get light envy (my buddy just set up a 1000 watt cool tube hortilux, but he is a care provider for another patient) but I like my system. How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? Just as far as makes sense and is practical.

Yea, we all know about the penetration of an HPS but this guy has already invested his money in a floro set up.

How about this, The girls are in 5 gallon containers so you got plenty of room for root growth however you lost vertical growing space. The floros kick ass (I have flowered with them) if you can keep your canopy level. What I recommend is to "supercrop" your girls now and set a screen over them. A poultry screen or something and continue to veg for a couple weeks. Supercropping is just bending the stalk about 1/3 of the way down and securing it, the side branches then get much more light that way and produce decent buds. The screen gives you multiple places you can tie the branches too to keep an even canopy. In the mean time go down and get two 4 foot 2 bulb fixtures with the 2700 bulbs. Add those and mix the bulbs.

If you have trouble with temps, run your lights at night, that will cool another 5 to 10°

Wow, thanks for all the great replies.

Sounds to me that one way or the next I am into at least another $200+ for doing what's right. So basically the way I understand it I could cob it and get by for about $110 with the CFL scattered around the grow and get possibly less than great yields, no idea how it might effect potency or I can spend about $220 to potentially do it right.

What do you all think about this unit and the vendor? http://cgi.ebay.com/600-WATT-HPS-DIGITAL-GROW-LIGHT-w-XL-HOOD-600w-BALLAST-/120504287703?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c0e9d81d7

Now, there is no mention on this linked item above (or others that I have looked at so far) about a specific red light (around 2700k); is that because it is assumed that an HPS is always red?

Sorry for the nube questions.......

So let's say I go for the above linked HPS light, how do I best use my current 6 bulb, T5 6500k fluorescent 4 foot unit thereafter?

Thanks!!!

People say great things about HTG Supply. I have never bought from them. I bought most of my start up grow stuff used and upgraded as I needed to. If heat is going to be an issue you may want to upgrade to a fixture that can be air cooled if needed. Maybe a 400 watt light that can be air cooled if needed.

I got one of there 600w systems running in my greenhouse now as supplemental lighting on cloudy days, Yea, Its gone through a couple grows now and I got no complaints. I just thought I would mention flowering with t5 floros produced the most amount of trichomes I have ever seen in over a dozen grows. more then HPS, MH and CMH. Great smoke.