Hello everybody, Just starting in the growing scene. I was in the aquarium scene for years and they use similar equipment in terms of lighting. For vegging, i was thinking about using SLR t5's. Does anybody use this for their grow? I know someone using T5s but the bend on the reflectors did not maximize the light output.
Well if you had looked, you would see lots and lots of people use T5's... I use them from seed to harvest. read the forums and see how to use them properly.
i asked a specific question regarding growing under single lens reflectors. there is a big difference in light output
Bud: Lighting is a very complex subject but some people try to make it a lot more complicated than I think it needs to be. First, you need the vocabulary of how they measure the light that you're using for what you want to do with your plants. I’m not an electrician and I certainly don't have all the answers but I'll try to simplify it for you. Wattage is the load rating of a lamp or the amount of electricity that the lamp draws or uses. As I recall from a Physics class I took in the mid 70's, but don't hold me to it now because I don't have the book in front of me: “Watts is current/amperage draw times the supplied voltage,” and it's usually read in fluorescent lighting in a relatively small number. CFL’s typically draw:14, 17, 21, 29 watts. Incandescent light bulbs draw: 40, 60, 100, and MH and HPS draw: 250, 400, 600, up to 1,000 watts. What that means is: the higher the wattage rating of the lamp the more electricity it uses and the more it costs to operate per hour. I think that’s the important thing to know about wattage. That's what got us all to convert to those little curly-cue CFL's, (compact fluorescent lamps), and they dropped my electric bill drastically on a level pay plan to the point where I don't even get a bill from the power company for three months of the year. Before my incandescent lights were burning 60 watts each, now they’re using only 14. It makes sense. The really tricky part of this is that they advertise the wattage of electricity they use and the amount of light they produce compared to the equivalent used by an incandescent lamp putting out the same amount of light. The ones I just bought claim they only draw 14 watts but they put out the same amount of light, lumens, as a sixty watts incandescent light bulb. The one I use on my clone mother draws only 29 watts but claims to put out the equivalent light brightness of a 100 watt incandescent bulb. Now is that clear to you? Or are you just as confused as everyone else? But we're not done yet. Lumens are a measurement of the amount light, the intensity/brightness a lamp projects and it’s usually measured in hundreds of lumens. I don't know where the top of the scale is but the new brighter, Ecosmart CFL lamps I just changed over to in my home advertise that they generate 850 lumens of light while consuming only 14 watts of electricity. Now you don't have to light a match to find the damned things at night when they're turned on like their earlier predecessors. My wife used to bitch that the old ones being too dim to read under but now she complains that the new ones are too bright. Go figure. Now let's consider the color of the light they're producing for what we want our plants to do. Color, frequency or temperature of the light it produces is measured when it's run through a prism and seen in the available spectrum of colors. It’s measured in Kelvins; K's. These new lamps I bought are rated at 4,800K's, which is pretty close to my 5,000K green/blue T-5 grow lamps I use in my tent for vegging. The lower the K's, the redder and the warmer the light. The higher the K's the cooler the light and the color goes from green to blue. Cool, green to blue light is for vegetative growth and warm red light is for flowering. Got that? If you can keep that straight, think about what the sun produces during the year. In the spring and early summer the light is bright and cool, it has a higher K rating number; it's greener toward blue and our plants grow. If you have a copy of Cervantes’s “MARIJUANA HORTICULTURE THE INDOOR/OUTDOOR MEDICAL GROWER’S BIBLE,” look at page 160. Grow lamps are green to blue and that's the cool light that’s suitable for vegging. Come fall we get those beautiful warm red orange sunsets and the light is red and warm and that’s the 2,700K red light we use for flowering. Now let’s look at the practical side of this. I’m going to fool my plants with the right diet and lighting to go from seed sprouting to harvest in half the time they would normally need in nature. From seed sprouting through vegging I feed my babies a high N diet that’s low P and K to go along with the 5,000K grow lights and the longer time period the lights are on. Right now I'm using 5,000K T-5 grow lamps for my plants to veg under. I'm told this is a moderately green light they like for growth and photosynthesis. One grower I know uses 6,000K's lamps and another uses 6,500K's. I was warned against the higher K rating by a person I trust at the hydro store. The other lamps cost a little more but my friend at the hydro store claimed he sees less light related problems with the 5,000K's so that's what I bought, and they've worked fine for me. Most people have these on for vegging anywhere from 24 to 20 to 16 hours a day. You choose. When my plants begin to preflower I change their diet to a lower N and higher P-K nutrient blend and the lamps in their T-5 fixture to warm red flowering lights that are rated at only 2,700K. I also drop the light interval, (the time they're on). Some folks go directly to a 12/12 schedule but I use a progressive light schedule. Mine start under 5,000K lamps for 20 hours of light at seed planting with 4 hours of resting darkness. I reduce the light by one hour a week. They start preflowering at about 14 hours of light and 10 hours of darkness and I change the lamps to red 2,700K’s and their diet to a lower N and higher P and K for flowering. But the progressive light schedule was a brain fart of one of my teachers and that's another issue altogether. I’ve already explained it here in another post. After some experimentation I settled on a progression to a bottom figure of 10 hours of light and 14 hours of darkness and stayed with that until harvest. And the strains I'm growing seemed to really like it. So if you're asking elementary lighting questions I suggest you RTFB. Refer to the following sources: 1. Read: SeeMoreBud’s book, “MARIJUANA BUDS FOR LESS GROW 8 OZ. OF BUDS FOR LESS THAN $100.” 2. Read: Jorge Cervantes’s book, “MARIJUANA HORTICULTURE THE INDOOR/OUTDOOR MEDICAL GROWER’S BIBLE.” 3. Read: Ed Rosenthal’s, “MARIJUANA GROWER’S HANDBOOK.” 4. Read: Mc Carthy’s book, “GROWING MARIJUANA.” 5. Read Greg Green’s, “THE CANNABIS GROW BIBLE-SECOND EDITION,” it’s every bit as good as the ones I mentioned above but, like Rosenthal’s, it’s a lot more technical.6. You’ll want to subscribe to, “HIGH TIMES,” magazine. Each issue is full of useful information. .” All these resources are very well written, well illustrated and packed with information that will answer most of your questions before you know to ask them. All of these resources are available at major book stores and at most growing forums. They will save you and your plants a lot of stress. The only problem with these forums is that if you get in a jam and need help right away it may be a while before we can get back to you. I sincerely hope this helps. I've used T-5's for the last few years just make sure they're big enough to cover your entire grow. Hank
Henry: I'm just passing on information that others were kind enough to share with me. What really fries my ass is the ones that won't even try it. Hank
T5 info found all over the forums...anything one needs to know can be found if they were not to lazy to look. fries my ass when people won't bother to research and demand someone just provide all the info in a nice little post, free of charge, they seem to feel entitled, as if other peoples time and efforts are worthless...
geesh---take it easy on the new guy..i,m sure he,ll figure out how to do the forum research. i ask questions in thse forums all the time and never got a response like that....it fries my azz when people pick on lazy folks cause i,m one of them---lol.
i,m sorry cball,,i just noticed in yur security notice that you may use sarcasim at times, so anyhow i understand now the point youwas trying to make. us lazy folfs can be a bit slow at times----lol.
damn just came across this thread, and it was useful as heck!!. Thnx guys guess....that doesnt make me a lazy one,
welcome to the g.c. forums gbit18...... you can find any thing you need to know by doing research or do the lazy way like me and ask certain questions and you,ll get some answers in no time at all. you can scan the forums and find out just about any thing there is to know and also meet some real interesting people along the way. are you using t5 lights? i,m just wondering cause i,m real interested in them and plan to set up a real nice grow system with them for my next grow. i just got slapped with one of those new :smart meters: so i,m going to have to be a little careful with my electric usage, but from what i understand a person can pull off a pretty good grow with these t5,s and they don,t really cost all that much. anyhow,,, good luck and hopefully you won,t run into any one as sarcastic as cball in your searches.....everyone else has been way more than helpful when you ask questions.... peace and stay green
Cball: Yes and No. I've been tempted to accept the cynical side of this argument in a few cases. Coincidentally, don't you think it seems to be mostly in the spring time when a young man's fancy turns to pussy and weed that they seem to come out of the woodwork? That seems to me to be when we get these clueless bastards that have suddenly decided to grow their own without any preparation what so ever. They just got a brain fart one day and wanted to go directly to the head of the line. Those burn my ass. But by now the ones who're asking for help are the ones who had the guts to get started in the spring. I'm guessing that now it's around harvest time and they're shitting little green bricks, reading their asses off and trying to figure out what to do next? Remember when? I do. Most of the folks here are pretty honest, I think. At least they have the guts and the interest to ask questions and start their researching here. What I try to do is show them where to find the information they need and I think we have a relatively limited number of reliable sources. I think if you believe the old saying: "If you give a man a fish you feed him tonight but that if you teach a man to fish you've fed him for the rest of his life," I think it's just a better way. I try to refer them to a source that I'm pretty sure will have what they need but that puts the load on them. And you don't get that, "But you told me," shit. I think you also have to consider that a lot of us weren't born in the computer age. We're being dragged into it, kicking and screaming, but we are going. A lot of us probably have a lot to say but we lack the computer skills to do it. I know nothing about those little characters below this reply box, what they do or how to use them. I'm seventy years old and what I know about using personal computers you could write down long in hand on a full size sheet of paper, crush it, ball it up until you could stick it in a flea's ear and it would still roll around like a baseball in a moving box car. I'll help almost anyone once. That's how I learned; from folks who knew more than me and were willing to share. But I figure, "Screw me once shame on you, screw me twice shame on me." There won't be a third time. If they ask me for my advice, fine. I'll give it. And I'd like to know how things worked out. If they don't like my advice then the hell with 'em. It didn't cost 'em anything and there's no guarantee that what worked for me will for you. And that's what I'm doing now, observing the responses of anyone who's tried some of the things I was taught and passed on. That should stir the pot a little. Hank
bravo--bravo--bravo!!! well said and well mannered there hank..... i thought i might of been the only one to dislike sarcasim from asking a question. if it was,st for people giving me good advice and for doing research i,m sure i would of gave up long ago on growing good medicene and having a really great time doing it.cball has givin out over 6000 posts and i just cant help but to wonder how many people he,s been rude too, i can see 2 on 1 page here. i try not to let these kind of things bother me but it just feels like when you see those first few red mites crawling around on your best female plant for the 1st time----lol. anyhow, like you i,m fairly new to the computer so i find that my thoughts work faster than my typing and spelling but i sure do like this method of getting infromation on certain things. i would of never have dreamed of some of the ideas and things that people have come up with when it comes to growing herb.i don,t mean to get off the thread of t5 lights but just from reading this computer i learned how to make bubble hash, oiniments, tea,s, some damn good food and my bud is way better than it use to be, and it,s all been from somebody answering a question or doing some research. but so much for sarcasim, its a joke to me now and now it,s time for some tea, a couple of cookies and some damn good smoke. i hope yur weekend is going well for yourself there hank.