New log, six plants, first time vegging w/HID

All my previous grows were done with cfls and floro tubes, However this time my seedlings are under my 2 175w coated MV lamps and cfls, I finished the remote ballasts and re-oriented the bulbs in their reflectors this week.
I must say I am quite impressed, all six seedlings cracked the surface last week under 6 cfls at 18/6; after that week my new hid setup was ready, within 2 days under these lights, all six have a first set of internodes, this never happened to me on previous grows with cfls and floro tubes. Even my last grow (just finnished) had very little internodal growth before flowering, and the MV lamps really showed me what decent flowering looks like (I flowered my last grow with the mv lamps, cfls for veg), I firmly believe in floros being more than adequate for good grows, but holy crap, these plants under the MV's are blowing up, they should be six inches tall by this time next week.

MV???

Are you serious?

If I am not mistaken, MV is the second worst light source from an efficiency standpoint next to halogen lights.

Sorry, but there is no way you will find that MV is better than MH for vegging...or good CFLs for that matter.

the coated bulbs I am using are 8400lumens/per @ 4000k vs 5900k for the crappy clear mv bulbs, they made my tiny plants from the last grow flower BIG for their size, and the growth of these new plants is quite impressive vs my last grow with just floros for veg. as far as i know the mv works fine, it just isn't nearly as efficient as even floro, but these two 8400lumen lights replace quite a few cfls and floro tubes (I use the cfls in my house to offset the cost of power). Of course I still have 4 26w cfls and 2 2ft warm white sets for side and rear lighting, this area is cast with some 24,000 lumens over a 3x1.5 area, the bulbs are 10" from top of soil in reflector hoods and I now have some 5ft vertical to play in, my last grow I only had like 20" max vertical (tops were bent) so my plants were like lolipops, I learned a lot.
I certainly would like to upgrade to hps, but 150w hps setup costs $120 retail here, my mv setup cost $40 for two fixtures, and $26 for two coated bulbs, I will get an hps soon, but money is tight and I already had 1 mv in possesion, so for now, the mv works just fine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HARDDON

MV???

Are you serious?

If I am not mistaken, MV is the second worst light source from an efficiency standpoint next to halogen lights.

Sorry, but there is no way you will find that MV is better than MH for vegging...or good CFLs for that matter.

---

From the research ive done, i complety agree

whatever makes you happy is the route to take.
by all means is you find these lights to perform better than cfls and tube go ahead and use em. thats the cool thing to do.


i just find the energy cost to be repulsive on anything but flouros myself, maybe my yield of tommy toes will suffer. BUT IM CHILLIN. :)

happy growin bud
Dion

mercury vapor lamps are basicaly floros, floros are filled with mercury vapor and coated for spectrum accordingly, the mv lamps run quite cool, after posting earlier I dropped my lights to 6" and when I got back from work, obiously no problems. I found during the course of my last grow, I was able to get the plants no closer than 1" from them(yep one inch, 2 intake fans, three fans for movement and a ceiling exhaust, even buds suffered no ill effect to being that close to the bulb, I will update this thread often to log this grow. tomorrow I'll post pics of the setup... probably....
As for efficiency, yeah they do suck, but my dual-headed sparc ultra10 uses way more juice, so I use my laptop more and installed those "12 leftover cfls" and actually made up for the cost of running my whole set-up, plus some.

What a rant... cough.. cough...

Ok, so I broke down and got that 150w hps to add to the mix, up and running, I'll post pics soon, but I have to go rotate the plants around the "spectrum".

you'll enjoy that better with better results for a small personal garden.

cool deal dude
Dion

Ok here's the 2 175w mercury with the 150w HPS, floros in the back and I removed the cfls from the sides, may put them back later. All 3 ballasts are outside this room cords going in and out discreetly of course, I have a light-proof ceiling exhaust, floor intake of two 80mm pc fans, two fans blowing upwards (at plants)from either side and another fan above the hoods for room movement, temps between 70-85 night/day just watered and misted with 250ml plain water w/25ml h2o2 and I rotate them once per day, this setup is 35k lumens (without cfls) and average 7700 lumens per sq ft. This is only my third grow (1 years ago, last one just finnished) and this will surely be the best. Plant pics are just the two most robust, (just watered and misted, so they are droopy).

they are in first day of week two since sprouting