MH vs. HPS + CFL's, for veggin

hello friends,

I have a question about HID lights. I've got an HPS ballast system (HTG supply -they're the shit!!) with a nice HPS bulb and a MH conversion bulb. The MH conversion bulb emits 38,000 lumens of 6400k light, and the HPS puts out 55,000 lumens of 2700k. I know the MH spectrum is preferable for veg, and the HPS is better for flower. My question is this though: I have a whole bunch of 6500k 30 watt CFL's, and I can easily hang them around my vegetating plants in the grow room, along with the HID light. So, am I better off with the 38,000 lumens of pure metal halide light for vegging, or 55,000 lumens of red spectrum HPS with say 240 watts of Daylight CFL's as supplemental lighting? Even with all those CFL's, I'd still have more intense light in the red end of the spectrum, but it'd be so much more light that I feel the plants might even grow faster that way than with the dimmer metal halide. Any thoughts, experience or wisdom greatly appreciated.

Happy puffin/

So any thoughts on this? Lots of text up there.


Question again (less text!:

Which would be better for vegging:

a) 400 watt metal halide conversion bulb - 38000 lumens, 6400 k

OR

b) 400 watt HPS bulb - 55,000 lumens WITH 8 30 watt Daylight CFL's

option a would be purely blue spectrum light, good for veg.

option b would give me like twice the light, but with mostly red and some blue.

So any thoughts as to which would promote faster vegetative growth?

Probably B because that is 640w of light all together and the cfl will definitely be enough for a good boost. But it seems like metal halide is the best I always use it so maybe you should give the option B a shot and let us know? Definitely less work to set up 1x metal halide than 8x cfls though.

vtguitar88 said:

So any thoughts on this? Lots of text up there.


Question again (less text!:

Which would be better for vegging:

a) 400 watt metal halide conversion bulb - 38000 lumens, 6400 k

OR

b) 400 watt HPS bulb - 55,000 lumens WITH 8 30 watt Daylight CFL's

option a would be purely blue spectrum light, good for veg.

option b would give me like twice the light, but with mostly red and some blue.

So any thoughts as to which would promote faster vegetative growth?

Click to expand...

I've been using cfl's for veg. Would rather have the mh. When I get another light I will go back to mh in the veg

Alright thanks for the thoughts guys. Yeah I've already got the CFL's all set up so I might just leave it that way. We'll see what happens I guess.

If you could do a side by side you would want the mh. I'm using two 100w cfls. when I was using the mh the plants were much bigger and tighter in the flower stage.

stumps said:

If you could do a side by side you would want the mh. I'm using two 100w cfls. when I was using the mh the plants were much bigger and tighter in the flower stage.

Click to expand...

right but I'm not comparing clf's to MH. I"m tryna compare (Metal Halide), by itself, with (High Pressure Sodium used alongside a bunch of CFL's). Is the improvement in rate of growth worth the electricity cost over a metal halide alone? Is there even such an improvement? etc.

the more light the better.
do it.
its only gonna make a replication of the sun closer then not doing it.

oh sorry. My thinking would be the added light would not be worth the cost. Depending one the cfl used you would get the same ct form them as the hps. Or if you used the hps skip the cfl's.