Supplemental CFL light - how many to make a difference? Flowering...

Hi! I am growing 3 plants under a T5 HO 4' (blue) light. Right now they're midway thru budding, with 4-5 weeks to go and I was wondering about supplementing their lighting with some red CFL's on the sides. I've been reading in the forum for about an hour trying to understand more about lighting, but I'm not very mathmatically or electrically inclined. How many CFL's should I get in total - was hoping 4 would do (2 on each side), but maybe I need 6? More? Should I go for the 23 watt (100W) bulbs or the 40 watt (150W) bulbs? Can I put these bulbs on some of those work light cords with reflectors? And how much would this light really help in producing larger, fatter buds in the 4-5 weeks they have left?

Thanks for any advice!

Why isn't this thread showing up? It's been hours..... (grumble grumble....)

Actually, I did the opposite. I use HPS for budding and a 4 lamp 4' T5HO blue spectrum for supplemental side lighting last grow. I have lamps for both spectrums but a little of the blue seemed to be a good idea. I'd add a couple of warm white lamps to your grow. Couldn't hurt.

Thanks for the reply, Shovelhandle. I really plan to continue on with the T5HO, can't really afford more than that, although I'm thinking of getting a second one and growing 6 plants instead of 3 (that's a big step for me!). I'm just wondering if some inexpensive CFL's in red on the side will fatten up my buds (which are looking pretty good, but, you know, greed...) Next grow I'll have some red tubes to put into the T5's, but at this stage I'll carry on with what I've got.

Would the CFL's really have to be inches away to do any good? Don't know if I can get them that close.

Attachment 293511I'll post a pic if I have one on the PC, but you should try what I did, and put 2 CFL's in each corner (total of 8) I used the 8x40 watts for a total of 320 watts. They don't have to be inches away to do any good, but they can be inches away, that's the bonus, you can put them almost right on your plant without harm.

This is the best pic I can supply, sorry

The sickly plant was a transplant from dirt into hydro that had been topped just before the transplant - It healed.

Thanks, Low-Rdr, for the info and the pic. I'm glad to hear they will still help even if not placed inches away. I bought 4 of the 23 W lights yesterday and have them perched on a chair-back, and some shelves, and on a wall hook. (Improvise!) Now when I go into the room I feel like I'm walking into the sun! I plan to redo my setup when I do my next grow in Sept. Better light planning. But the girls seem to be doing really well.

cfl's work best in a cluster, a lot of people put thier cfl's super close.. heh. if you have too many it will burn just like a HPS. Im using about 14 cfl lights (only) they are all 23w 1750 lumen each which equals to about (25,000k lumen) 322wats and the results are amazing & the best part the heat is super low. my setup is about the same as a single 300w hps light with much less heat. You can get 150w HPS lights now for around 80.00 usd
I think my cfl setup cost me about 35.00 to build then what ever the cost of lights are. normally 10-15.00 per 4 pack. one cool thing about cfl's is you can take away or add more at any time. when i vegg i prob use 4-8 lights, then add more as they get bigger.