I originally had 3 lights on 8 plants 2 100w standarb bulbs and one portable 300 w. all three were coming from diff sides in the horizontal. 2 bulbs Blew so i put in one 125w halogen 3 weeks ago and today i got 2 40 watt florescent growing bulbs Should i use the original setup Or just the new setup Or the new setup and the portable lamp 300 w O and the portable gets reallly hot and some leaves turn yellow and dry out but the tops are good
Halogens are no good for growing....the fluros are....the halogens are the wrong spectrum....you'd be better with a HPS high pressure sodium light or a MH metal halide..... if you can only have the fluros then you'd be better getting more of them....but best of all is a good hps...say a 250-400w hps......Peace out...Sid
i seen some new fluros at wal mart i might buy, one light puts off 200watts but only uses like 30, i want to get 2 or 4 of them. It's best to get some HPS lights if you can, if you can't get a lot of fluros.
yeah... halogen and regular light bublbs dont work very well to grow ... get flourescent if u cant afford any hps or mh
on a limited budget. If this is the case I would continue to veg my plants the way you have been ...hey at least they are alive and you are getting some vertical growth. But....and this is a big one....if you really want some buds at the end of flower you are going to have to go HID...as Sidious has previously stated. But you don't have to go all out if funds are indeed limited. I just recently purchased a 70 watt high pressure sodium outdoor floodlight that wasn't wired for indoors. I had to buy the needed materials to make it"plug inable".....in all the total cost of this including the 70 watt floodlight was 80$ Canadian...about 35 British pounds......If you could swing for a larger setup that would be advisable as the 70 watt setup gives out 6,300 lumens in the red spectrum( the one best suited for flowering) compared to say 50,000 for the 400watt and 145 to 155,000 for the 1,000 watters. More lumens properly used equals more buds....along with a proper light timetable such as 12/12 and proper feeding, no pests, etc. Peace!!!
Or you could use a MH for veg, and the MH and HPS for flowering. If you're aiming for yield and can put a cooltube on your HPS, get the 1kw. Also, a 250w puts out 28,000 lumens (at least mine does). Also consider heat control, adequate ventilation, a carbon scrubber, and all the usual garb.
I am growing my plant under 2x 20 watt flourescent screw-in bulbs, cost me £4, and my plants gorwing like a bitch.
Floros can give results, and produce little heat if it is a concern. They are profoundly good for veg, but if you veg your plants for two months, theres no way that they will penetrate the canopy in flowering; the light is just not intense enough on a plant that big (or multiples as I had). I suppose you could do sidelighting to compensate, but It's easier to change just that one hps bulb. However, I've seen floros do some very nice SOG, one to note would be a 3000 watt floro SOG that was complete madness it had so many SOGged plants in it. The floro/hps argument has been an everlasting one, and people do good with both; use what suits you best.
I keep finding bigger and brighter CFL's at great prices. I'm just 2 weeks into 12/12 after 7.5 weeks of 24/0 and I see some girls coming out. I will finish with what I have before trying HPS. I've got enough lumens, the wattages are not sky-high and the room is at a constant 80 degrees F with the fan off. I can't get much more stealthy than I am and maybe next time I'll venture into HPS territory but this grow will tell. The new ones are 85W x 6000 lumens x 2700 kelvin. I have additional CFL's in there for a total of 260W x approx. 18000 lumens. There are 105W CFL's out there and they're cheap but they're probably easier to break just because they don't come enclosed in any sort of housing and they're almost as big as a football. Question: Is 2700k a good color temperature for flowering? What is ideal for best buds/best yield? I'm seeing some good deals on HPS floods, etc. lately so I'm tempted to buy a couple of 150W HPS but the CFL's are so simple to get going. It must be nice to be able to run big HPS and not have to worry about getting burned. here's where I found what they're calling "stealth lighting">> http://www.dechydro.com/lights.html#stealth
That is basically the same light(blue spectrum) as put out by METAL HALIDE lighting......they will work fine for flowering but I have found through experience that indeed most indoor gardeners do in fact know what they are doing when they use High Pressure Sodium lights. These lights put out a spectum of 6500 Kelvin which mimics the sun in AUTUMN. This tells the plants to flower more profusely....it is in nature the end of their lifecycle and they better make big buds to catch pollen and make seeds.....we don't want seeds indoors of course(unless you are trying for seeds)...we want plants that we call "Sensimillia...or without seeds".....so hps is the way to go....although I have heard that there are in fact compact fluoros that do indeed put out light in the red spectrum(6500Kelvin)!!!! Good luck and save up for that HPS....it will pay off for itself many times over in the long run. Peace!!!