So right now I have 2 plants flowering in my closet under a 400w HPS. One is 6 weeks and doing great, the other is a clone of the same plant and has been flowering for about 3 days now. I also have two other plants (different strain) in week 6 of veg. I had those two plants vegging in my grow box under 375w of (equivalent) CFLs. My question is this... I feel like having only one full plant and a clone under a 400w bulb is wasteful, so would it stress the plants out too much if I put them all under the HPS during the day and then moved the veg plants back to the CFL grow box at night while the HPS is off? Thanks in advance.
Never go by the equivalent watts, only the actual watts matter. The CFl's you have probably aren't even putting out half the lumens the 400w hps does. Anyway, I still think it would be alright to do what you're saying as long as you kept doing it every time.
i probably wouldn't do it, but i couldn't say for sure if it would have a negative effect on the plant as I don't think I've heard of anyone doing it. If it were me I'd just wait until I was ready to flower the other plants and just have em all together. If you forget to put em back in veg too often you'll probably make em hermie. Also whenever you talk about CFL's, always go by the actual not equivalent wattage. Equivalent wattage is crap.
I understand that one should use the real wattage with CFLs (in this case 84w). I wasn't comparing the wattage or lumens of my HPS to the CFLs, I know they are very different. I was more concerned with moving the plants back and forth between different color temps as the CFLs obviously put out much more blue spectrum than the HPS.
NOPE! As long as you move them into there in stages. Set them under the 600W light for 45 minutes the first day then 2 hours the next and so on and so forth. Just keep an eye on them over the first couple of days for signs of light burn and stress. They'll be fine! I know many growers that put their plants in the sun during the day and back under CFL's at night without issues. (The sun is a BIG light.. ya? Hehehe)
Alright, thanks for the help guys. Im going to switch them back and forth for another week or two until they are ready to be flowered.