Well after countless amount of calls and emails to people selling there metal halide setups, im only now begining to wonder if its worth purchasing. Can i use them only for the vegetative phase or is it possible to use in flowering as well? possibly along side an HPS? Just looking for a little advice and good vibes to ease this curiosity. Good lookin out g. city.. -Ny edit: Is anybody using metal halide? how is/has it worked out for you?
Metal halides are great for both veg and bloom but there's a trade off. Though the bud weight will be less, on average the potency will be greater with MH. MJ grows large bud formations under HPS spectrum. If you want the best of both worlds... get a Ceramic Metal Halide... most complete spectrum and fabulous for both veg and flower. Weird in that molst use an HPS ballast. Go figure...
You should do a little more research on this website.. All these questions you are asking i asked a month ago, and found out by reading all these dam threads. They say you should 100W per plant. So typically a 400W would work for 4 plants or less. If you are just gonna buy 1 bulb, you should buy a HPS bulb and use that for both phases. But you should look around man, a HPS bulb,ballast,and reflector with a MH conversion bulb is pretty dam cheap. You can buy brand new the whole thing for about 180$, or used on ebay for even lower. Hope this helps--
i dont have any plants yet. ive done a "little" reasearch on this site and the most ive seen were people using cfls and fluoros. the mh setup comes with the bulb, ballast and reflector {600w} .. so im sure i can get a nice 6 plants under there. i guess for the most part i was just looking for a couple "success" stories using metal halide so that i'd feel better bout my upcoming purchase.
Well to help you out again, I've read many journals and seen many persons results with the HID lights. Using MH over flourescent is probably gonna give you better results than CFL's. From what i've found out is that people use CFL's because they are cheaper, and they don't cause alot of heat like the HID lights do. Using the MH bulb the whole way through will work better than using a CFL, from what i've learned, i'm not talking from personal experience though. The plants will grow with light, your MH will be fine
much appreciated mike, i did find some people using metal halides in their setups and i will be going thru with the purchase. . also i noticed some bagseeds that i threw in a cup of water last night has broken its shell so im on my way now.. .. hopefully all works well..