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I"m about to start a new CFL grow in a 45 gallon rubbermaid container. The container is ~34" long and 19" wide. I already bought a couple bathroom light strips, with a total capacity for 8 bulbs. I am planning on growing around 4-6 plants, so my question is, what wattage CFLs should I use? I would like to just go with eight 42 W bulbs in the 5000K range, but I have a feeling that may be overkill (and not to mention expensive!).
it's hard to get overkill with lights. cannabis loves light. the thing you need to be worrying about is heat. how do you plan on venting/cooling your box? CFLs get HOT! they might not get super hot to the touch, but they put out a bunch of heat. go with the most light you can while keeping your temps in range,78F.
-shake
Well, I'm planning on throwing in a huge 10" fan, so heat shouldn't be a problem. So I'll definitely plan on getting at least eight 42 watt CFLs, but is there a certain color temp that I should use? Most of the 42 watters I've seen at the stores here only give off 2K-3K light, but I've seen some online that run up to 5000K.
i think you are getting color temperature confused with lumens. color temperature is the color that the light is, more red, more blue.....and lumens is the measure of light intensity (as seen by the eye).
as far as color temp goes, you want 6500K for veg, and 2700K for flower, or a ratio therof.
you want as many lumens as possible.
what type of 10" fan do you plan on adding?
-shake
Just a regular honeywell desk fan. I don't know how I'm going to attach a carbon scrubber to it (which will probably be necessary once the girls get to flowering), but it should provide more than enough ventilation.
As far as lumens go, I'm guessing that I'll have around 4000/ft^2, which should be more than good for a CFL grow. But with color temps, would the plants grow well if I used a combination of both throughout the entire grow? Or would I need to buy a different set to use for each growth stage?
Bump. I'll probably buy two different sets of bulbs (6500K for veg, 2700K for flower), but damn it'll be expensive. Is there any cheaper way to mix them up? (For example, like half and half for the whole grow?)
Dude how are you planning on growing 6 plants in a 45 gal rubbermaid? I just set up a dual 25 gal box, and am only planning on 1 plant for obvious space reasons, but I am starting from seed, in soil. Also I am only using 6 23w cfls, 4 6500 and 2 2700 for veg and the other way round for flower. I have also found heat was a problem with the crappy fan I had so I got a really good 120mm computer fan and fixed that a bit(still gets up to 90, but not over).
Anyways I hope you take this into consideration when starting. My plan is for a heavy LST to keep height down as I only will have ~ 17 inches of total growspace once my single plant is in its final transplant container(I got a dish tray, almost 5 gallons, and fits perfect in the rubbermaid)