I have secured an unlimited supply of free 100w metal halide lights....... I was wondering just how bad they are for flowering. And also can I just put a 100w hps bulb in my mh ballast or would I have to change my capacitors or starters or anything like that? The ballast/fixture I am currently using is a Lithonia Twa 100m with a Sylvania 100w metalarc M90/O bulb The ballast itself is a universal lighting autotransformer hx-hpf for use with m-90, m-92 or m-140 lamps I may be able to get an hps ballast and all but not as easily as I can get the mh ballasts. I do understand that mh ahould be used for veg. and hps for Flowering
A few things... First of all, how do you come to have an "unlimited" supply of such lights? You don't owe me an answer here, it just raises a question in my mind. I don't condone theft to support this hobby or for any other reason. Second, MH not good for flowering, wrong spectrum/color temp. Third, I am not the techie/engineering type so the specs you provide don't tell me anything, but generally you cannot just screw an HPS bulb into a ballast made for MH. Could be a fire hazard. One of the two (I believe HPS) needs an igniter that would not be in a ballast made for the other. You would need either a conversion bulb or a separate ballast, unless there is something about the MH ballast you have now that specifically was made in anticipation of an HPS bulb.