T5 succcess

What kind of buds do T5s grow? I want to try a 4ft 12 bulb for veg and bud, but not if it will produce way lower quality buds. All input will be greatly appreciated. Im currently vegging with 400w mh and plan on budding with a 1kw hps, but Im already having heat issues in my grow room, and the 1kw will make it worse. And thats with my duct lines running through the light and a ac vent ran into my space.

see Hank Alveraz for T5 info, he's on this lighting forum heaps.

but a jump from 400mh to 1khps is one BIG jump, consider a 400w hps with 6" dia venting

peace
"V"

see Hank Alveraz for T5 info, he's on this lighting forum heaps.

but a jump from 400mh to 1khps is one BIG jump, consider a 400w hps with 6" dia venting

peace
"V"

Thanks dude, Im gonna check him out. As far as my lights now go, its an air cooled hood with 6in holes, and I pull the air through my inline fan. I already have a 8in inline fan for the 1kw, but idk if it will be effective. This fan pulls like 710 fpm, so it should be pretty good. My fan now pulls like 260 fpm I think.

Skunky: I was turned on to T-5's a couple of years ago and I haven;'t looked back yet. I grow my meds in a 2' by 4' by 6 1/2' tent with two four tube fixtures 4' long. I start seeds or clones under 5,000K blue grow bulbs and go all the way up to harvest under my 2,700K red T-5's. If we cut to the chase I can give you the short version:
1. Keep 'em close to your plants. They burn cool so there's not usually a problem.
2. Make sure they completely cover your grow. They don't project light out like MH or HPS.
3. My buds aren't as tight and dense as the ones grown under HID but they're just as effective and with the balance of good nutes they taste good.

If you need more, here's the long version. Lighting is a very complex subject but some people try to make it a lot more complicated than it needs to be. First, you need to understand how they measure the light that you're using for what you want to do with your plants. I’m not an electrician and I certainly don't have all the answers but I'll try to simplify it for you.
Wattage is the load rating of a lamp or the amount of current or electricity that the lamp draws or uses. As I recall from a Physics class I took in the mid 70's, but don't hold me to it now because I don't have the book in front of me: “Watts is amperage draw times the supplied voltage,” and it's usually read in a relatively small number. CFL’s typically draw:14, 17, 21, 29 watts. Incandescent light bulbs draw: 40, 60, 100, and MH and HPS draw: 250, 400, 600, up to a 1,000 watts. What that means is that the higher the wattage rating on the lamp the more electricity it uses and the more it costs to operate.
That's what got us all into all those little curly-cue CFL's, (compact fluorescent lamps), and they dropped my electric bill drastically on a level pay plan to a point where I don't even get a bill from the power company for three months of the year. Before my incandescent lights were burning 60 watts each, now they’re using only 14. It makes sense.
The really tricky part of this is that they advertise the wattage of electricity they use and the amount of light they produce and compare it to the equivalent used by an incandescent lamp putting out the same amount of light. The ones I just bought claim they only draw 14 watts but they put out the same amount of light as a sixty watts incandescent light bulb. The one I use on my clone mother draws only 29 watts but claims to put out the equivalent light of a 100 watt incandescent bulb. Now is that clear to you, or are you just as confused as the rest of us? But we're not done yet.
Lumens is a measurement of the amount light, the intensity it projects, the brightness and that's usually measured in hundreds of lumens. I don't know where the top of the scale is but the new brighter, Ecosmart CFL lamps I just changed over to in my home advertise that they generate 850 lumens of light while consuming only 14 watts of electricity. Now you don't have to light a match to find the damned things at night when they're turned on like their earlier predecessors. My wife used to bitch that the old ones being too dim to read under but now she complains that the new ones are too bright. Go figure. Now let's consider the color of the light they're producing.
Color, frequency or temperature of the light it produces is measured when it's run through a prism and seen in the available spectrum of colors. It’s measured in Kelvins; K's. These new lamps I bought are rated at 4,800K's, which is pretty close to the 5,000K green T-5 grow lamps I use in my tent for vegging. The lower the K's, the redder and the warmer the light. The higher the K's the cooler the light and the color goes from green to blue. Cool, green to blue light is for vegetative growth and warm red light is for flowering. Got that? If you can keep that straight think about what the sun produces during the year. In the spring and early summer the light is bright and cool, it has a higher K rating number; it's greener toward blue and our plants grow. If you have a copy of Cervantes’s “MARIJUANA HORTICULTURE THE INDOOR/OUTDOOR MEDICAL GROWER’S BIBLE,” look at page 160. Grow lamps are green to blue and that's the cool light that’s suitable for vegging. Come fall we get those beautiful warm red orange sunsets and the light is red and warm and that’s the 2,700K red light we use for flowering.
Now let’s look at the practical side of this. I’m going to fool my plants with the right diet and lighting to go from seed sprouting to harvest in half the time they will normally need in nature. From seed sprouting through vegging I feed my babies a high N diet that’s low P and K to go along with the 5,000K grow lights and the longer lights on schedule. Right now I'm using 5,000K T-5 grow lamps for my plants to veg under. I'm told this is a moderately green light they like for growth and photosynthesis. One grower uses 6,000K's lamps and another grower uses 6,500K's. I was warned against the higher K rating by a person I trust at the hydro store. The other lamps cost a little more but my friend at the hydro store claimed he sees less light related problems with the 5,000K's so that's what I bought, and they've worked fine for me. Most people have these on for vegging anywhere from 24 to 20 to 16 hours a day. You choose.
When my plants begin to preflower I change their diet to a lower N and higher P-K nutrient blend and the lamps in their T-5 fixture to warm red flowering lights that are rated at only 2,700K. I also drop the light interval, (the time that they're on). Some folks go directly to a 12/12 schedule but I use a progressive light schedule that starts at 20 hours of light at seed planting with 4 hours of resting darkness and I reduce the light by one hour a week. But that's another issue altogether, and I explained it here already in another post.
After some experimentation I settled on a progression to a bottom figure of 10 hours of light and 14 hours of darkness and stayed with that until harvest. And the strains I'm growing seemed to really like it.
So if you're asking elementary lighting questions I suggest you RTFB. Refer to the following sources: 1. Read: SeeMoreBud’s book, “MARIJUANA BUDS FOR LESS GROW 8 OZ. OF BUDS FOR LESS THAN $100.” 2. Read: Jorge Cervantes’s book, “MARIJUANA HORTICULTURE THE INDOOR/OUTDOOR MEDICAL GROWER’S BIBLE.” 3. Read: Ed Rosenthal’s, “MARIJUANA GROWER’S HANDBOOK.” 4. Read: Mc Carthy’s book, “GROWING MARIJUANA.” 5. You’ll also want to subscribe to, “HIGH TIMES,” magazine. Each issue is chocked full of useful information. .” All these resources are very well written, well illustrated and packed with information that will answer most of your questions before you know to ask them. 6. There's another excellent book I'm reading right now by Greg Green called, “THE CANNABIS GROW BIBLE-SECOND EDITION,” it’s every bit as good as the ones I mentioned above but a lot more technical. All of these resources are available at major book stores and at most growing forums. They will save you and your plants a lot of stress. The only problem with these forums is that if you get in a jam and need help right away it may be a while before we can get back to you. I sincerely hope this helps. Hank

Thanks Hank, perhaps skunky can have a look on my blog under library and do a.. catch up

peace
"V"

Thanks Hank! That was exactly the answer I needed. My heads spinning a little bit cuz I medicated right before I read your post, and that was alot, but much appreciated. Im definitely gonna go with T5s for my next grow. Maybe 3 4ft 8 bulb fixtures and hit them from the top and both sides. My boy just harvested a grow he grew under 12 bulb fixtures and all his buds are tall and stringy. I wonder what went wrong? Thanks for the info, peace.

Thanks Hank, perhaps skunky can have a look on my blog under library and do a.. catch up

peace
"V"

Thanks vostok, Im already checking it out.

i didn't read "all" of hanks reply, but t-5's are great! you won't get the yield, but the quality is def. there! i only use them now, for seedlings and clones, but some folks use them from start to finish and do pretty damn good!

Skunky: if they grew tall and scraggly then you may have had them too high off the tops of the plants. All of my fixtures recommend 6" to a foot and I keep them at about two inches. I got into that habit with the Aerogardens CFL's nd it works for me with the T-5's. Something to think about next time. I hope that helps. Hank

Skunky: if they grew tall and scraggly then you may have had them too high off the tops of the plants. All of my fixtures recommend 6" to a foot and I keep them at about two inches. I got into that habit with the Aerogardens CFL's nd it works for me with the T-5's. Something to think about next time. I hope that helps. Hank

Thats what I said too, but I never saw the grow, just the end product. Its a great Trainwreck, its just tall and stringy buds. Itll still get you baked, and thats what matters.

i didn't read "all" of hanks reply, but t-5's are great! you won't get the yield, but the quality is def. there! i only use them now, for seedlings and clones, but some folks use them from start to finish and do pretty damn good!

Ive thought about doing what your doing for my next grow too, except use the 2700k T5s up til about 3 wks before harvest, and then switching to my 1kw hps for that added boost for the last few weeks. IDK yet, cuz Im still vegging the plants Im growing now.