I am currently running (8) 24" HO T5's on my vegging girls. Thus far, the lighting has produced some awesome growth, although being a First grow, I dont have much to compare too... Herein lies the problem, Within a couple weeks i will need to start flowering, but haven't yet decided upon a what to do for lighting. I would like to be flowering in a 2'Dx4'Wx4'H box, so height an heat will be an issue. More and more, i am leaning towards using Red Spectrum HO T5's for fllowering. If i do it this way, i will start off with an initial 40,000 lumens through (8) 4' T5's, Possibly adding more to the sides of the chamber if needed. And after all that... THE QUESTIONS: Has anybody ever flowered with T5's? What where you're results? Would that cabinet space be enough to properly house a 400W HPS and give optimal lumen output? Any other statements/info on T5 and flowering would be ill. Thanks in advance farmers & farmerettes (would include pics of the girls, but the camera is a douche)
i really cant help you much with t-5 lights but i am using cfl's and they work great for small grow areas and where heat is an issue. I think you could get away with a 400 watt in that area if you used a cooltube to keep the temps under control.
They will probably flower just fine with your T5's. I use 48" T12's and don't have any problems. Make sure you either switch to the 2100K temp lamps, or if you can find the GE Plant and Aquarium bulbs at wallyworld, they work a little nicer (IMHO) - they are supposed to have a higher quality of plant useable red spectrum light. here's a great post on everything you ever wanted/needed to know about lighting
i flowered once with my veg lights which are 110w compact t5s i used 1 per plant (10000L) and my yield was about 2 ounces...i bought a 400w hps and tried to put it in the same cab and its way way way to hot so now im waiting for the cash for a cool tube i hope i helped
i had great results with just 4 4foot t5s. i grew and flowerd 5 plants just fine..i had like 14 growing under the light but put most of them outdoors before flowering the 5 best looking inside.