whats up everyone? Right now i have three autos going in a grow box but im planing on bringing it up to 8 autos. I have a 8,000 lumen t5 and 4 3,500 lumen cfls and was wondering if you think that will be enough light for 8 of them. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Nugget: the golden rule of T-5's is to make sure that the fixture completely covers your entire grow. If it does you should have no problem. I hope that helps. Hank
Nugget: for what it's worth, I started experimenting with T-5's close to a couple of years ago and most of what I've learned has come from my own research and what my friends have taught me at the hydro store. I usually point beginners to a list of resources but they say very little about T-5's. Why? I don't know as T-5's have been around for a few years now. Not I had a good question, "How big is your area?" Your T-5 fixture has to completely cover your grow space. For example: I hung a single tube, 2' fixture over a 10" by 20" starter tray with five long rows of 10 starter plugs and the ones in the center row grew vigorously straight and tall. The others in the outside 2 rows stretched up to the light and were scraggly. I put a 4 tube wide fixture that completely covered the same starter tray and all 50 grew straight up and strong. That experience has led me to hang two four tube fixtures 4' long from the ceiling of my 2' by 4' grow tent and now I have 8 square feet of grow space below that is totally equal and productive. I think there's a lot we still have to learn about T-5's but I can confidently tell you that: they burn cool so you can hang them close to your plants, they're economical to run and a lot neater to have in your grow space than the cords to a dozen or more individual CFL's. I hope that helps. Hank
Hank is right. T5s don't give much light off to the sides...in fact it gets just a little light (pun intended) close to the edge. Other thoughts for your T5s...you can play with "aquarium" bulbs and go for PAR lighting - everything from actinic blues for veg to 660nm for flower, etc. Of course, you'll get good results without doing that so just be sure to cover what you want to grow.
JCM: lets try to keep it simple for the newbies who are interested in trying T-5's. Tell them: 1. If they're going to use T-5's, get a fixture that completely covers their grow. T-5's don't project light like other types of lighting. They have to be close but since they burn cool it's not a problem. 2. Shop around. I, like a lot of my friends, bought a fixture on line and with shipping and handling it was about $10 more than what I paid later at a local hydro store. You live and learn. And that was after waiting for a couple of weeks for them to send it. Sadly, the one I bought on line didn't have as nice of a reflector as the one as the one I bought from the local hydro store, but of course I didn't know that until I had it. 3.Start with a high nitrogen diet under blue 5,000K or 6,000K or 6,5000K lamp tubes that you can buy anywhere for seed propagation and vegging. Depending on the skill level of the grower, photo periods can vary from 20 hours on when using a progressive light schedule to the typical 16 hours. 4. When you want to force flowering change the diet to a lower nitrogen formula and one that's higher in P and K, and swap out the lamps to red 2,700K's. Drop the photo period. Most folks like 12/12. A lot of these kids that are asking the questions need to RTFB first. The problem is that there isn't much on T-5's. I think that's curious since they've been around for a while now but it may have a lot to do with pressure from the rest of the industry. I hope that helps. Hank