polyarcturus
Well-Known Member
you are wrong, they do put out heat but not unmangable heat, just need a small fan blowing across.Those bulbs suck! They put out so much heat they are useless for our hobby! The fluorescent bulbs don't put out heat and they last longer. The fluorescents will work great for SOG but your right they dont have much canopy penetration.
The bulbs you posted would work really good if you built a homemade aircooled relfector and ran them so they wouldn't interfere with your HPS lighting.
also they will last much longer and emit UVB much longer than fluorescent, and if cooled well a years worth of use is not unreasonable. the issue is the 2 different kinds of glass used, the chemicals in florescents, and the amount of UVC emitted causing polarization in the glass.
they have much better spread and intensity(penetration), while fluorescent is limited in both distance and penetration, it has more spread when used up close, has the advantage of being placed vertically, which effectively means more UVB across more of the plant, but in a horizontal situation as most are forced to use by the design of their grow room, the MVB would be more efficient, UVB spectrum wise, price and wattage wise.
the order of the most effcient come in this order, specialty MH bulbs,mega ray, they use special glass emits less heat, a little less uvb than MVB but with the added bonus of more blue spectrum, MVB(mercury vapor bulb, specialty reptile ones), then last but not least in the case of micro growers fluorescent.