T5's? what di you think

I have been thinking about getting t5 4 rows was wondering how well that would work for , begging 4 ladies. Anyone with experience?

t5s are great for vegging and make good use of LST but thats about it. youre going to want different spectrum for flowering optimally. they do make t5 flowering bulbs but youll have to heavy-lst since CFL luminosity decreases rapidly with distance

Don't beg for the ladies. Veg for them, but don't beg for them.

I've seen good clone and mom setups with t5s, and they don't make much heat. Not incredibly good results with flowering with them, but OK with the proper lower-spectrum bulbs.

best light for vegging imo..

best light for vegging imo..

+1

What I use, love em.

I have been thinking about getting t5 4 rows was wondering how well that would work for , begging 4 ladies. Anyone with experience?

The C.A.P. 4'-4 bulb t-5 work good for me. B-strap is correct. Luminosity does
decrease with distance. Had mine @ 3-6"s above ladies and results were cool.
Remember that lighting is only 1 link of the plants life chain. Vegged 12 little ladies. 4 should do well under a 4 bulb t-5.

T5 Ho from sunblaster kicks butt big time they also Claim they will grow for all stages.
Tho i only use them for clones and veg usually for a few weeks but this time as its summer and heat becomes a issue i decided to try them out here are a few pictures and you be the judge 136 watts 5 plants around 9 weeks veg
I got some lower leafs yellowing which is minor tho but i am shocked at how well there doing in veg

Nublet: I love them. I went to T-5's over a year ago and I haven't looked back since. I use them from planting to harvest and they're cheap to operate, they burn cool but there is one serious disadvantage you should know about: they don't spread light out like HID. So if you go with T-5's get a fixture, or combination of fixtures big enough to completely cover your grow. If you do I think you'll love them too. I hope this helps, Hank

Nublet: I love them. I went to T-5's over a year ago and I haven't looked back since. I use them from planting to harvest and they're cheap to operate, they burn cool but there is one serious disadvantage you should know about: they don't spread light out like HID. So if you go with T-5's get a fixture, or combination of fixtures big enough to completely cover your grow. If you do I think you'll love them too. I hope this helps, Hank

I would love to hear more about this. I use a 1000W HPS now for flower, but I veg with floro. I have been thinking about adding some T5 side lighting and some cfls in the middle.

Marsdude: I've convinced a few friends to try T-5's and they did but they chicken out at flowering and go back to HPS and MH. The only difference I can see is that their buds are denser where mine are fluffy but mine are just as potent. When you're trying to stay off of codeine that's what's important and one of my four tube fixtures burns 220 watts of power as opposed to your 1,000. You might want to investigate this further. I hope that helps. Hank

After I went T5 (well, PLL actually - which is T5 turned into a "U"-shape, giving twice the lumens but less coverage), I never went back to CFL.

It's possible to flower with T5's, I've seen some really nice harvests on rollitup.org using these lights. (search for "LED spectrum using T5's" or something like that)

I guess the problem with CFL is that it's a single light-point, which quickly gets inefficient only a few inches away. But with tubes, you get it spread out more.

BTW: 2x55 PLL (110W, 6500 K) tubes, and a single 250W HPS is all I need to keep myself happy year around.

Addict: it sounds like it might be worth a try. It's a little more complicated than my set up. I do it all under T-5's with nothing extra. I have only two electrical cords; the T-5 fixture and fan to a 1800 watt power strip and a single cord from there to the wall outlet. My cords are wrapped neat and out of the way with Velcro straps from the 99 cents store. It works for me.
In my cloning tent it's a single 6000K CFL in a spun aluminum hood from the Home Depot with a single cord. It's ventilated from the big tent via a 4" drier duct. I like simple because that's usually safer. Something to think about. Hank

Marsdude: I've convinced a few friends to try T-5's and they did but they chicken out at flowering and go back to HPS and MH. The only difference I can see is that their buds are denser where mine are fluffy but mine are just as potent. When you're trying to stay off of codeine that's what's important and one of my four tube fixtures burns 220 watts of power as opposed to your 1,000. You might want to investigate this further. I hope that helps. Hank

Well those fluffy buds are why I am trying to add lighting. Fluffy buds can be as potent as more dense buds, but denser buds give you more product. Of course the goal is always to, first produce as potent a product as possible, then as much from each plant as possible.

Every grower finds that the buds closer to the light are usually denser, and bud formation on the lower branches will be poor. I, along with many others will trim the bottom branches off so the plant will not expend resources on them.

Most growers find that the more light you can shine on a plant from above (within limits) the better the penetration and therefore lower bud production. I have always used reflectors to aim some of the HPS light into the plant from the side. Now I want to use floros to actually get light into and under the canopy.

I grow four plants in a perpetual grow. I grow them large using a Current Culture under-current system with the large buckets. I have been thinking about putting a large mogul based CFL in a vertical cool tube right in the center of the four plants and using some T5s around the perimeter.

Marsdude: I'm afraid you've got me there. I've never used T-5's for side lighting. True fluorescent lighting doesn't penetrate like HID but it doesn't eat energy like they do. My T-5's are directly overhead and they're very close to the tops of my plants. That's the only light source that I know of that you can do that with.

The only time I used any kind of side lighting was when I was growing with the Aerogarden; the compact self contained table top growing system. Everybody was bitching about not enough light and I noticed that I was only getting buds at the very tops of my plants and nothing below the fan leaves.

I vaguely remembered something from my college physics course about the angle of light, incidence equaling the angle of refraction/reflection and I made and put aimed Mylar covered reflector panels around my Aerogardens. The key point was 'aimed reflectors'. They lit up the normally shaded underside of my plants and I got buds all the way down to the planting deck, essentially doubling ir tripling my harvest. Admittedly that was a whole lot easier to do on a miniature grow than it would be with my present operation but it proved a point.

My friends laughed at me and solved their problem with extra side lighting. Most of it they did with individual CFL's, and the result was cords running all over the place, but I recycled the light I had already paid for back up with my aimed reflectors and it worked. I would try that before stringing extra lights and cords and buying more electricity. A roll of 2mm Mylar will be cheaper in the long run than a life time of Mr. Edison's electricity. I hope that helps. Hank

Marsdude: I'm afraid you've got me there. I've never used T-5's for side lighting. True fluorescent lighting doesn't penetrate like HID but it doesn't eat energy like they do.

Hank,

That is not necessarily true. HIDs, especially HPS can be much more energy efficient than floros. That is why they are so widely used. Here is a good graph I stole off another thread here. I used to have a really good illustration of this but I can not find it






This is why you will see people use multiple 600W HPS lights for flower instead of fewer 1000W lights - the essence of "more bang for the buck."

Although I don't have to pay my power bill, why would I want to use more power than I need to? This is why I use T5s for veg. The plants are smaller and need WAY less light than flower. T5s, IMHO, are more efficient at this than MH.

However, in flower, for most grows, a good HPS is the way to go.

I got a 6 bulb, 4', Quantum Badboy in a GrowLab GL80L (2.5' X 5') tent for Veg. It has been one of the best upgrades I've made to my Veg. setup. I think the reflectors on the Quantum's are excellent and really increase the light intensity and penetration.

By the way, I've seen some grow journals using only the Quantum 16 bulb, 4' setups, and my god they look GREAT! From Veg. through flower they looked spectacular.

Bud

Bud: considering the width and length of your tent that may be all you can fit in there. In my 2 by 4 tent, which is actually 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 feet, I have two four feet long four tube fixtures side by side and they work great. They cover my whole ceiling and give me wall to wall grow space with a little unlit fringe on the ends. Just remember to keep your plants completely under the fixtures and you should be happy.

As I recall, if it's the single switch model of the Badboys, it comes with a tube of each color of the lights you'll need: grow and flower in every other space. If it's the dual switch model you'll have three of each and you're going to have to buy more tubes so you have enough for a complete set of each. You can veg on six grow lamps then transition on a mix or flowering and veg lamps like some of them came with. You can switch over to all flowering lamps when they're ready and probably get better results. Badboys have a good reputation so I think you made a good decision. Please keep us informed as to your progress. Hank

Edited by Hank Alvarez, 12 June 2012 - 11:51 PM.

Hank, I just Veg. with the T'5s; I still flower with a 1000w Digilux HPS bulb in a 6" air cooled Block Buster reflector, ran on a Solis Max ballast.

Bud

Bud: some people have to learn the hard way, but then that's the nice thing about living in a free country, as long as big brother doesn't know. Please fill us in on the particulars of the fixture you bought, the lamps you're using and most important, the results. We're all learning. Hank

Well, as I said, it's the 4' 6 bulb quantum. I could have fit an 8 bulb fixture in the Grow Lab GL80L (2.5' X 5'), no problem; I just figured that a 6 bulb set up was enough, so why wast another 108 watts?

I grow in the spare bedroom of a small 2 bedroom house, so I have to keep the electricity use as low as possible. I already run 324 watts T5, 1000 w HPS, 2 extraction fans (1 6", 1 4"), 1 intake fan, 2 internal circulation fans, and an 8000 BTU window air conditioner in the summer.

My results have been very good: the Quantum's have very good reflectors, allowing you to raise the light 6-8 inches above the plants to get complete light coverage from the 6 bulb unit (although you certainly can keep the lights just a couple of inches above the tops). This essentially allows me to get complete coverage for my Veg tent with 324 watts and not much heat.

The plants have loved the T5s--I use the Veg bulbs made by Quantum for their fixtures. The growth has been robust, producing stout plants with lots of strong branching, short internodes, and lush green vegetation.

As an example, I recently harvested an Osiris (White Widow X AK-47) by Pyramid seeds. I veged for 6 1/2 weeks under the T5s and flowered for exactly 60 days. I got 7 ozs. dried and cured.

Bud