I just recently bought a refurbished 400W HPS w/ a remote ballast from insidesun.com. Works great but I have 2 plants right now,(just starting out ), one is about a foot tall and the other is about 3 inches tall and they are still vegging. These plants were grown to their current height using natures grow light (aka the sun). The bulb is a standard HPS bulb. I know that a MH bulb is best for Vegging and HPS for flowering. I want to get a Sun Agro bulb eventually but will the standard bulb be fine for vegging until i can afford the Sun Agro bulb? Will it hurt my plants?
400 watt hps is a beautiful choice. During veg cycle the hps is fine and dandy. When flowering the hps will give you tighter nugz. Just make sure you keep the tops of the plants even with each other, this is so the small one grows equally as fast and recieves the same light as the taller one. Good luck and keep growing, Greenbudz
should he turn his HPS off at any time? i heard that its not good to keep ur HPS running all the time, cause the light will die faster and get to hot.. same with the ballas.. i use floro to Veg and HPS at the same time.. but i turn off the Hps for a few hours and let the floro to the job wile the light rests.
Turning the lights on and off costantly makes the bulb burn out quicker. This is because the surge of extra power used to start the bulbs up wears it out faster. If you leave a light on all the time it uses alot of electricity but puts les wear on bulbs. Greenbud
If you use inductive contact relays the effect of this should be negligable. Bulbs should be changed about every 8,000 hours (one year of 24/0 is near enough 10k hours) as intensity drops noticeably. Every 18 months to 2 years is a good rule of thumb.
When buying a new bulb you may find this lumens rating chart from overgrow useful. BRAND\tMAKE\tCATEGORY\tWATTS\tINITIAL LUMENS\tPAR WATTS\tCCT Hortilux\tSuper HPSTM EN\tHPS\t430\t58500\t220\t~2K Hortilux\tSuper HPSTM EN\tHPS\t400\t55000\t205\t~2K Sunmaster\tSuper HPS Deluxe\tHPS\t400\t55000\t132\t~2K Philips\tSon T Agro\tHPS\t400\t55000\t\t~2.05K Philips\tSon T Plus\tHPS\t400\t55000\t\t~1.95K Philips\tSon Plus \tHPS\t400\t54000\t\t~1.95K GE\tLucalox® Standard \tHPS\t400\t51000\t\t~2.2 Philips\tSon Standard\tHPS\t400\t48000\t\t~1.95K Philips\tSon T\tHPS\t400\t48000\t\t~1.95K Osram Sylvania\tLumalux® Standby\tHPS\t400\t47500\t\t~2.1K GE\tExtra High Output (XHO) \tMH\t400\t44000\t\t~4K GE\tHigh Output (HO) \tMH\t400\t41000\t\t~4K Osram Sylvania\tCompact Super Metalarc®\tMH\t400\t41000\t\t~3.8K Sunmaster\tWarm Deluxe\tMH\t400\t40000\t159\t~3K Sunmaster\tNatural Deluxe\tMH\t400\t40000\t151\t~4K ArgoSun\tMS\tMH\t400\t40000\t\t~3.2K Sunmaster\tNatural Deluxe\tMH\t400\t36000\t136\t~4K GE\tMulti-Vapor® Metal Halide Standard\tMH\t400\t36000\t\t~4K Sunmaster\tCool Deluxe\tMH\t400\t32500 Sorry it's a mess. The original page can be found here. Good luck and good growing.
excellent info. there sureshot .. the h.p.s. has a bulb the hortilux which from all the reviews i read on it will do fine for all stages of growth.....technolegy has come around in our favor..you could go with a m.h. conversion bulb which will run off your h.p.s. system,, although i believe the h.p.s. by far otpasses a strictly m.h. system...