vegging with 5500k

Cloudkill

New Member
does anyone have any experience vegging with 5500k lighting ? what was your experience with it compared to conventional 6400k systems ? I am a bit of an experimentalist and entertaining thoughts of vegging with 55's with some 30's thrown in. What can I expect ?
 

justanotherbozo

Well-Known Member
does anyone have any experience vegging with 5500k lighting ? what was your experience with it compared to conventional 6400k systems ? I am a bit of an experimentalist and entertaining thoughts of vegging with 55's with some 30's thrown in. What can I expect ?
...first, and i'm not being nit-picky, you need to understand that 5500k with a small 'k' means something different than 5500K with the big 'K', the small 'k' denotes thousands and the big 'K' refers to the Kelvin temperature of the light, aka the color frequency of the light.

...so, based on what you've written i'm gonna assume you mean 5500Kelvin and the difference between 5500K and 6400K probably won't produce much difference, ...i personally veg under 4100Kelvin and i like that because it is very similar to a CMH bulb, not as intense or powerful but the same color spectrum, basically.

...btw, the higher the Kelvin number the more blue and the less red that light generates and so the bluer the light the squatter the plants, ...which is a good thing for flowering but for cloning you need some internodal distance so you need SOME red light in the mix, ...and keep in mind that in nature the sun generates more blue light in the winter and spring and more red light in the late summer and fall so providing more blue in veg is the right way to go.

peace, bozo
 

Cloudkill

New Member
Thanks justanotherbozo, and yes, i meant K not k.. was typing in haste and assumed given the numbers i was talking about there was little room for ambiguity :).

what other light temperatures accompanies your 4.1k K system ? total wattage and lumens ? (if known), i'm just curious and would like to know other lighting regimes, I guess I am learning still, learning from others is good.
 

lifetagger

Member
so i have a small box right now to keep some outdoors i like and i ha 1x23watt 2700 1x23watt 6400 and 4x13watt 5500. got to say my babies are happy. not to much difference that i notice from last time i did 1x125watt 6400. the only thing was more light foot print with more bulbs. good luck ninja keep goin
 

Cloudkill

New Member
so i have a small box right now to keep some outdoors i like and i ha 1x23watt 2700 1x23watt 6400 and 4x13watt 5500. got to say my babies are happy. not to much difference that i notice from last time i did 1x125watt 6400. the only thing was more light foot print with more bulbs. good luck ninja keep goin
yeh, makes sense, more light, more bulbs as opposed to 1 big bulb,.. as lumens per watt become better at lower wattages. I guess I'll how I go with 55's and some 30's during veg, just finishing up a current lot before the next generation tho, as thats all the grow space i am affording myself at the moment. But here's what I intend for veg in the next gen:

Total watts : 306W (210W 'Blue-ish' 5.5k K + 96W 3.0k K Red)
Total Lumens : 20310 Lumens (14070 Lumens from 5.5k K + 6240 Lumens from 3.0k K)

Lumens per square ft : 6346 Lumens/sq ft
Watts per square ft : 96 W / sq ft

its a small area, stealth grow, usin what I got, see how we go.

Any comments, welcome.
 

justanotherbozo

Well-Known Member
Thanks justanotherbozo, and yes, i meant K not k.. was typing in haste and assumed given the numbers i was talking about there was little room for ambiguity :smile:.

what other light temperatures accompanies your 4.1k K system ? total wattage and lumens ? (if known), i'm just curious and would like to know other lighting regimes, I guess I am learning still, learning from others is good.
...i do my vegging inside a 4 x 4 tent and the lights i've been using for over a year now are just 2 bulb 4 foot shop lights, i use 2 so 4 bulbs all at 4100Kelvin and all at 40watts so that's a total of 160watts.

...i run a perpetual on a 10 week cycle meaning i flip a new set of clones on the same day i harvest the old ones so that means i always have 8 flowering and 8 vegging and getting ready, plus a half-dozen mothers.

...btw, i started learning this hobby using nothing but CFLs and i used nothing but CFLs for almost 2 years before i upgraded to my first HPS setup, ...now my grow has become so easy it almost runs itself, very stress free.

...anyway, as a former CFL user i would suggest to you that you flower short plants and that you stick with the 23s and 26s because they will give you a good result while being very cost effective, you can often find them, in varying Kelvin temps, in 4 packs for under 10 bucks.

...here is something you can put together for very small money and with the addition of the Y splitters you double the number of bulbs per fixture.



...and here is a shot of a couple in action over a couple of DWCs i was running at the time.


...if you can spend a few bucks a better alternative would be PL-Ls which are a newer type of CFL that is better partly because the bulbs are straight rather than twisted so more efficient at delivering light and partly because they are remote ballasted so much of the heat is removed from your grow space.



...this is a shot of my clone/seedling box for which i bought those PL-Ls and the bulbs are 55watters and are approx. 23 inch's long but they are available in lesser wattages and the lower the wattage the shorter the bulb so if you don't have the width you can use 36watters and just use more of them.



anyway, try not to stress this shit, the plant is a weed and far hardier than you might imagine so can take an awful lot of abuse, hell, i'm living proof of that, lol.

peace, bozo
 
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