I am using a 2'x 2' box. i stappled aluminum foil to the box all on the inside. i have a small fan on top, and i dont know what kind of lighting i should use. i started with a flourecent 150 watt light, then bought a 250 watt heat lamp ( that mad my sprout start to shrivel up,) so now im just using a 40 watt flourecent soft white household light. i know i should probably get a HPS or something, but they are expensive, i need a cheap alternative that i can buy at walmart or a general goods store. any other advice is welcome.
There's no reason you can't get good bud from a few CFLs. In one of my grow areas I have 2 plants in a 4x2 space with six 23w CFLs over them and 2 fluorescent tube shop lights vertically on the back wall. The yield on this particular area will be rather lackluster but at least I will get some. The heat lamp was putting out too much...wait for it...HEAT. Reefer grown indoors likes a nice, mild temp of 75F in the day. Go too far over that, like the 90sF and your plant gets heat stress and its growth is stunted. Make sure not to put the light too close to your sprout, it's delicate right now and needs minimal stress. Even running CFLs, which don't produce a ton of heat but still produce enough to impact grow climate. Need ventilation of some sort. Cool air in, hot air out. I assume you're growing in soil. It should be loose and airy. When I mix up a batch of soil I use plain top soil, sphagnum peat moss, and perlite. The peat moss and perlite keep the soil from getting compacted too bad. Overwatering is just as bad as and sometimes worse than underwatering. It took me a while to figure this one out but, pick up your container when its dry and keep a mental note of how heavy it feels, now water it until water flows out the bottom, once the runoff stop then make another mental note of how heavy the container is. These are as light and as heavy as the container will get. (Obviously the plants growth will make the container heavier but you should be able to hopefully take that into account when your weighing them.) Reefer grown in soil likes a pH of around 6-6.8. The pH of my well water is 8.3. So, if I used that water directly on the soil it would soon bring the pH to over 8.0 and when the pH is above 7 too long your plant gets "nutrient lockout". When I water my soil plants I use pH neutral water of 7.0. Generally the nutrients you add to your water will lower the pH of your water. Lastly, the aluminum foil, I hear, is bad for reflection in your grow because the foil could possibly focus the light reflected off it onto the plant/s and cause small burns where it's focused. A coat of white paint reflects a goodly amount of light and won't burn your plants, plus it's cheap.
A Pack of 2- 23WATT 6500k CFL bulbs at Walmart are around $7. I used 4 of those bulbs to grow 1 plant, It turned out Beautiful. Also remove the Aluminum foil... Just paint the Grow area white.