E-Z question

this might b obviouse to some of u guys but im buying my first high wattage lamp and i just wanna know, if i buy a 400 Watt HPS lamp with a ballast will it be able to work if i put a 400 Watt Metal halide bulb in it rather than a HPS cuz im on a shoestring budgett. i meen it makes sens to me cuz its just a different kinda bulb.

I don't believe that you can do that. However I have seen conversion lights on Ebay that double as Halide and HPS, check some of those out (pretty cheap too).

yeah you need a conversion ballast to do that, hps will work for vegging as well as flowering, so your better off just getting the hps setup.

Ok here is your options.You can spend a little more maybe 60 bucks more and get a conversion ballast which has a switch and you choose mh or hps then slap the corresponding bulb in there or you buy an hps ballast the if you want mh light you buy the $65 or more conversion bulb but you can not stick a regular mh bulb in a hps ballast or vice versus as it will blow up and fry your ballast.

OR save money.

FUCK the MH and veg with the HPS.

hps is not bad to veg with. lumen per watt ratio is higher then MH. it is just a 'warm' light so is better to flower with then MH. it saves money. not to be tried unless you want to seriously damage your stuff, but i have plugged a hps bulb into a MH 250w ballast with not problems. my bulb burnt and grabbed the wrong one and didnt realize until it was heated back up and the color of the light was different. this may be that it is 250 and not 400. does anyone know?

with the higher wattage it's more dangerous to switch bulbs, so using a MH in an HPS at 250w is safer then at 400w... but either way, BAD IDEA.