First grow - indoor/closet

it kind of depends on how tall you expect these plants to grow also... if you are going to bud them out after they veg till about 16inches... you may not need all the extra lights

yeah id just grow 2 monsters, instead of 4 plants. saves room and can pull more bud out of the 2 plants.

timeismoney1 said:

yeah thats perfect!

and to be honest 400w might not even suffice for 4 plants just to let ya know. id just grow 2 monster plants.

and im not sure about the t5s not alot. the t5 ho however put out some good lumens. but with just 2 t5 that would be nowhere near enough

Click to expand...

ok good to know!

is there a way to convert a reg t5 to a high output t5?

you need to buy a t5 ho ballast. dont waster your money on that. theres as expensive as that mh/hps system your going to buy and not as good.

If I were you I'd start thinking ahead to your total setup. You can easily match the light output of a 250w MH with 4-6 t5's packed very dense. With this you're looking at a fairly even output with a width of around 2ft. 8 tubes can outperform a 250w MH, but aren't going to be able to match a 400w MH. Keep in mind that the ability to get t5's in longer tubes means an 8 bulb 48" fixture is going to be able to veg roughly 12-18 sq ft, which would take multiple HID's, and the t5 will produce less heat. However, part of this intensity comes from the fact that you can place your T5ho fixture very close to the plants (at least compared to HID). This means they are less than ideal for flowering (unless you surround your plants with them). IMO if you can afford to get a nice 6-8 bulb T5ho fixture AND an HID, and have the space to flower and veg separately, that is your best bet. If not, I'd go for an HID.

Something to keep in mind, don't skimp on the reflector/hood. Watt for watt a cheap ballast paired with an incredible reflector will provide more light to your plants than the most expensive HID in the world using a shitty (or worse, no) reflector. For t5ho's this means individual bulb reflectors. Most budget brands don't use them, and lose 40% of their output because of it.

Spectrum makes a big difference too, and it's much harder to get good veg spectrum out of hps, easy with MH/T5's, easiest to fine tune with t5's.

I almost forgot. Something else to keep in mind, lumens is a measurement of the visual spectrum of light. PAR is the measurement of photosynthetic spectrum of light. In flowering the spectrum measured by lumens is the most important. In veg, the lower nm wavelengths are more important, and lumens is not nearly as good a measure of proper intensity as PAR. Luminosity is a good general figure, but is relied on too heavily. Also keep in mind that the color of light (measured in kelvin or wavelengths), its spectrum, can generally be modified by bulbs.

id be interested to learn more about modifying the bulbs to change the spectrum. and yeah ill be getting that combo 400w shortly, but i can still use what i have in addition right?

new pics of temp set up until 400watter comes



notice the brown spots on the yellowing leaves - what could be causing this?

hey mate that yellowing is from the ligth being 2 close had the same thing

if u look !!!!!

bit of hps sun burn lol 600 watt of sun burn

up to this point i had only been using a couple cfls and a t5 fluro. how far should they be away?

ordered a 400watt mh/hps fixture - how far should that be away also?