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I understand that flourescents are ideal for a couple plants but are not ideal for the flowering stage as they dont produce enough light for larger plants as demand is too high. What lighting do you reccommend i switch to once my plants are ready to bud?? .... keeping in mind that i only have 3 females
help is appreciated
400 watt hps... will be more than enough
400W HPS. for vegging you want to use a metal hailide 400W bulb that you can switch out. The HPS bulb emits in the red spectrum of light which is what the plans require at the flowering stage of life. This bulb simulates the fall season with different light frequency.
you usally determine lighting needs by room size not really going to say other than you want a hps light and while you could fit 3 females under a 400 if the plants were small it may not be adequete enough for future grows if you was ever planing on growing more plants.
thats why id just puchase another if more plants are needed for 2nd grow.
By HPS u mean High pressure sodium right?? How are these ranked? and i dont want anything that will b too strong or expensive as i am just growing 3 plants in a small closet space. Also, wat are these CFL lights everyone is talking about, they seem common and work productively??
thanks
Hey strippin, i've just started growing with cfls, nearly ready to start flowering now. I decided on cfls because i only intend growing 3 plants for personal use, i understand with a hps i could get a greater yield and more potent buds, but they get a lot hotter and require a bigger fan and maybe a cooltube too. It seems to be a lot cheaper and less hassle to use cfl's. Depending were you are they come in various watts, 20's, 42's and in the uk there is a 200watt envirolite, ranging from £1-£40. You don't need a balast with a cfl or contacters for switching them on either. Well worth considering.
you can grow very good plants exclusively under fluorescents ... but, you should switch lamps out to a 'warm' spectrum, usually around 2700K or so, for flowering ... regardless, I have grown out very potent plants over the years using nothing but cool white fluorescent tubes for the entire length of the grow, which is NOT recommended (I didn't know any better) ... but, the plants still grew well, just not as good as possible ... after expanding to twelve 4-foot tubes (35,000 lumens), I finally switched to a 400hps, just due to the weight of adjusting the 12 tubes ... (in some ways, I still prefer the fluoro tubes) ... :smokin:
You really just need about 50 watts of power per square foot of space, alot go by lumens per square but watts per sq is a good easy measure.