Pro's and Con's of growing complete life cycle under T5's?

Growing in soil. And switching from veg to bloom bulbs at 4 weeks or so. What the benefits or problems with that setup? Thanks

it will work fine. I use cfl and mh for veg. after I grow them 4 feet tall ill switch to mh for light penetration. and using cfl for flower will give you an ok yield. I use cfl and hps for flowering. to save electric. if this is for your personal smoke. you will be very happy. lower electric bills. great smoke. using those hps are costly. my electric bill is more then my house payment.

The only con of flowering with t5 is intensity. It works best with scrog or short lst plants. Since its linear lighting and not a single point of light. You want the the t5 to be as close to the canopy as possible. About 2-4 inches away. Other than that. It will definitely out perform hps.

hyroot said:

It will definitely out perform hps.

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Ridiculous. T5 would work fine but there is no way you are going to match HID HPS for yield. Also, you will not gain anything by switching from the T5 "blue" to the "red" bulbs. Stick with the blue all the way through as the intensity is the same. The reason growers switch to HPS for flowering is that there is a significant intensity differential betweeh HID MH and HID HPS. Otherwise, nobody would ever use HPS, spectrum nonsense be damned.

^^^^Have you tried growing with a t5 with high par aquarium and fresh water bulbs. Its already been proven on this forum over 3 years ago. Do some research next time. Gotten 0.8 grams per watt almost every time. Far better quality and denser than hps. Its been done and done, by me and a ton of other people . Several threads. Led without led my first t5 grow, club t5, the ultimate spectrum thread, and the 100's of journals....

learn about light and how plants absorb light. Lumens and watts have no place in growing. Lumens are for humans not plants. Its about par(photosynthetically active radiation), spectrum, and cri(color rendering index). Par t5 matches par even can beat the par of a 1000w. 1800 umole/s. Hps put out wasted light the plant doesn't absorb. Too much yellow and green and not enough blue and red. You also want some green. The green region helps plants absorb photons in other areas. With t5 you can control spectrum and Change it when ever you want.

best bulbs, zoo med flora suns, uvl redsuns, htg 5400k, and htg 2700k.

so many people don't use hps. Most growers now a days use CMH, led, t5, and induction. I've pulled about 4-5 zips a plant with a 330w CMH vert. 8 plants.

IF I had to choose between 150 watts of (t-5 or CFL) floros and 150 watt of HPS, I'll choose, and yield more with the floros every time.

Once it get's over 200-250 watts or so, the HPS starts to 'outshine' (every pun intended) the floros...

This is only my personal experience and it doesn't man squat, no controls, just a 'general' anecdote.

https://www.rollitup.org/groups/advanced-t5-growers-2011-pictures.html

https://www.rollitup.org/indoor-growing/358190-led-without-leds-my-first.html

https://www.rollitup.org/cfl-fluorescent-lighting/493026-club-t5.html

https://www.rollitup.org/led-other-lighting/638146-ultimate-flowering-spectrum.html

http://pcp.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/4/684.long

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892149/

I veg using CFLs,

I flipped my veg to 12/12 it took eleven days to kill my males and have my girls show flowers.

About 5 days Before I switched back I put red bulbs in 1 of my 3 side by side fixtures.

For 3 days the Growth was the same, by The end of the 4th day the stretch was starting to show.

I kept the red CFLs over the plant even after I flipped it back to 18/6 for a week.

Growth was more stretched under the red bulbs and bud sights were larger, side by side with the same pheno.

That plant is the first one I put in to Flower as the bud sights were more pronounced along with the more rapid growth.

fg2020 said:

Ridiculous. T5 would work fine but there is no way you are going to match HID HPS for yield. Also, you will not gain anything by switching from the T5 "blue" to the "red" bulbs. Stick with the blue all the way through as the intensity is the same. The reason growers switch to HPS for flowering is that there is a significant intensity differential betweeh HID MH and HID HPS. Otherwise, nobody would ever use HPS, spectrum nonsense be damned.

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I am flowering under a 400 watt HPS
I supplement with two CFL 95 watt fixtures on either side of my plant!
590 watts, 81 degrees happy plant!