im still in the process of getting all of my materials ....luckily im pretty handy with electrical stuff so I can set up a lot of it im planning on getting a jardin twin 2.5 and fit it with the lights and fans as needed anywhays here is my question.....my lighting will consist of one 200 watt cfl (true wattage 600+ watt equivalent) 6 t5 florescent tubes on 3 of the wallz...in my cfl fixture I want to outfit it with 2 12 wat led lights and 2 50 watt HPS lights.....when I calculated it it was about 40,000 lumens I wold 1st grow 5 plants in a soil base.....my question is simple do 50 watt hps (for that matter 5o watt hid lights) need a ballast? I just want to make sure I don't want my light to explode or not work correctly...... questions 1.do 50 watt HPS need a ballast to work?? 2. is my lightin construct inough for 5 plants should I put more lights less etc ?
I myself have some doubts about my lighting set up but im already two weeks into it....i have read hours of peoples ideas and basicly xompacted everyones ideas into a super high idea haha... sprouting phase you want a med low light intensity. Now with lights like cfl (i m using cfl also) mine are floursents no hps or led or anything. The color the light emites is very important and is always forgotten. You want a watt bulb that emitites a blue tint. And a low watt bulb or bulbs that emite red. Plants use red and blue rays to grow. They use less red and absorb more blue. I do a 75% blue bulb and 25% red bulb. I take my total wattage i wanna use and 75 percent of that wsttage needs to be blue. increase thr red bulb % to about 1/3 total watts during vegitation amd right before flowering and changing light cycle go back to 25% red bulb. More % of red during flowing has shown a high increase in male plants hense jamaca got seedy budd cuz all the male plants. Light cycle sprout 16light 8 dark during veg18 light 6 dark during flowering 12 12 10 14 depending on yields shown Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Also hps are exspensive high heat and red output unless u live somewhere relitivily cold then ok but make sure the distance is far away hps drop humidity dramaticly floursent are cheap to buy run and thry havr grest yields if u study a lil Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
Yes, you need a ballast for each of those 50W HPS lights, as far as I know. Maybe there is one built into each fixture? What do they look like?
Why do you want all those different lamps. The problem with mixing lamp types or even wattages is that you need to hang them at different distances. This leads to some lamps shadowing light from other lamps. It sounds like you will be burning well over 400 watts. Why not just buy a single 400w hps? It's a lot cheaper to buy, a lot easier to fit, and give give you a lot more light
Why do you want all those different lamps. The problem with mixing lamp types or even wattages is that you need to hang them at different distances. This leads to some lamps shadowing light from other lamps. It sounds like you will be burning well over 400 watts. Why not just buy a single 400w hps? It's a lot cheaper to buy, a lot easier to fit, and give give you a lot more light
Why do you want all those different lamps. The problem with mixing lamp types or even wattages is that you need to hang them at different distances. This leads to some lamps shadowing light from other lamps. It sounds like you will be burning well over 400 watts. Why not just buy a single 400w hps? It's a lot cheaper to buy, a lot easier to fit, and give give you a lot more light
Why do you want all those different lamps. The problem with mixing lamp types or even wattages is that you need to hang them at different distances. This leads to some lamps shadowing light from other lamps. It sounds like you will be burning well over 400 watts. Why not just buy a single 400w hps? It's a lot cheaper to buy, a lot easier to fit, and give give you a lot more light
Why do you want all those different lamps. The problem with mixing lamp types or even wattages is that you need to hang them at different distances. This leads to some lamps shadowing light from other lamps. It sounds like you will be burning well over 400 watts. Why not just buy a single 400w hps? It's a lot cheaper to buy, a lot easier to fit, and give give you a lot more light
it would be at about 400 but it wouldn't be as hot as 6 lights would straight florescents....main thing i am concerned about is heat because its such a confined space so i wanted to stare clear of HIDs how ever i have read that HPS "penetrate more thus producing more growth so i wanted to use it as a suplementalat light.....as far as all of them needing a fixture i would one need one reflector......the florescent would go on the wall and the rest of the medium base bulbs would go on the reflector that i would put on the reflector
I didn't really understand that last bit if I'm honest, but if you have the fluorescent tubes on the walls they won't be close enough to do anything. Why not use a single 250w hps then? They give off hardly any heat and you will still likely get more bud than the fluorescents. Don't get me wrong, fluorescents work, I use CFLs and hps (but not in the same tent) but they require more work and are generally a bit of a pain to flower with. They need to be kept a couple of inches away from the leaf surface so lots of plant training is needed to keep the leaves close to the bulbs. What would be great for you is to buy a dimmable 400w hps ballast and bulb. You will be able to switch between 200w, 300, 400w and 440w. You can then switch down if the heat is a problem, or turn it up to get more bud. If the heat is a big issue you would be better off scaling up your ventilation instead of scaling down your lights