my plants are in 12 inch pots, with (4) 40 watt cool white flouros. the plants are growing good and are starting their fourth set of leaves at 2 weeks but the problem is it doesn't seem like they are growing tall enough.they are only 4 or 5 inches tall at the most so all the leaves are bunched together. is this normal? the lights are about 3 inches off the plants.i will be getting a 400 watt hps/mh setup soon. will it be o.k. to run both together.thanks
how old are your plants? with floros, you can basically have the plant nearly touching the lights cause they don't produce much heat and yes, you can use both lights the floros are more of the light spectrum for veg growth, while the hps have a better spectrum for flowering many growers use cfl's during vegging over their hps lights due to that fact MH would be optimal for veg growth, but floros do a damn good job of it as well and most people say its not worth the money to buy a mh as well as an hps unless you get one of the ballasts that you can interswitch mh and hps bulbs
well my plants are 2 weeks old. and i was actually wondering if i can use a mh and an hps light at the same time for veg. growth.would this be an adviseable setup. i just worry that my plants aren't growing tall enough.thanks.
yeah, more light = more energy for the plants just make sure it doesn't get too hot 4-5 inches seems about normal to me for 2 weeks
Yeah... You gotta have a lot of room to spread that heat out in. 800 watts of HID lighting is gonna create a lot of heat. How many plants are you growing? If your space isn't all that big, you can always just use the MH for veg, and then switch to the HPS for flowering... But if you have the space and means of controlling the temperature, then definately use both at the same time. Having lighting that's high in blue and red spectrum is a lot better than either by itself.