Light Upgrade

Roche Mars

Member
My seedlings are growing nicely and i feel it is due time to upgrade my lighting system. Currently I'm workin 2200 watt flourescents (dont laugh, i was too broke to get more :-/ ). What brand of light can I easily buy from Home Depot or summin that wont attract much attention.


Oh yea and I'll post a pic as soon as i get a %&@* digicam..... that WORKS!
 

IndicaDogo

Active Member
If you want a real good light I wouldn't go buy it from Home Depot or anything like that.
I rum COB led and will soon be using Horticulture Lightning Group or HLG quad board led's. I started cheaply in the beginning and used galaxyhydro led fixtures from Amazon. They worked alright and I got a harvest, but it was not as good as it could have been and would have been cheaper in the long run to just start with what I have now lol.
 

Gumdrawp

Well-Known Member
My seedlings are growing nicely and i feel it is due time to upgrade my lighting system. Currently I'm workin 2200 watt flourescents (dont laugh, i was too broke to get more :-/ ). What brand of light can I easily buy from Home Depot or summin that wont attract much attention.


Oh yea and I'll post a pic as soon as i get a %&@* digicam..... that WORKS!
I'm not sure why you think having horticultural lights is a big deal, a lot of people near me in Michigan have smaller indoor gardens for herbs and stiff during the winter. If you're worried about physically going into a grow shop you can order off of Amazon or eBay and they don't report what you buy unless asked to under subpeona afaik. You can always check your local craigslist/letgo/etc but beware of other people stuff bringing pests/mildew etc into your garden.

I got a 400w adjustawing with ballast and a 4x4 tent with a small hole for 40 bucks when I was first starting up, some guy was selling his previous tenants shit he left behind and I got lucky, got a few seedling mats and a bucket full of ratchet ties and a brand new bulb still sealed in the box for an extra 10 bucks. Unfortunately as I was new I just brought it into my basement and cleaned it patched the hole and set up, but I still ended up with spider mites. So after having to buy some azamax and various mite treatments i think I was at around $120 for a tent hood ballast bulb like 10 sets of ratchets and 2 seedling mats with dimmers.

If you buy anything from somewhere where you're not 110% sure it's clean and pest free treat it and wash it outside your home before bringing it in.

If you're really trying to go more normal household cfl stuff you're probably best off getting a few of something similar to like 125w cfls. Honestly I don't think getting at least ho t5 lights or a small led panel would be too outrageous
 
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Roche Mars

Member
If you want a real good light I wouldn't go buy it from Home Depot or anything like that.
I rum COB led and will soon be using Horticulture Lightning Group or HLG quad board led's. I started cheaply in the beginning and used galaxyhydro led fixtures from Amazon. They worked alright and I got a harvest, but it was not as good as it could have been and would have been cheaper in the long run to just start with what I have now lol.
I used to have the same brand of lights as I found very nice and I also used lightimetunnel, both compared to the two I still prefer Galaxyhydro, and I feel they sometimes look a bit similar to the design.
 

Gumdrawp

Well-Known Member
1000w isn't necessary if he's just doing a small personal grow, I personally wouldn't run less than a 400w though, and if you plan on having more than a few plants at least a 600. If you're looking for any sort of weight 1000w single or de, or at least 400+ true watts of cobs.

My first grow when I was like 17 was under cfl' s and I got a respectable 4oz off of i wanna say 6 or 8 60w cfls. Definitely not the best quality I've ever done but it was pretty reasonable considering i wasn't growing for profit.
 

BMWEATER

Well-Known Member
You can check out my grows, I use the Galaxyhydro and the Mars 300...basically the cheapest LEDs you can buy and they work awesome. There used to be a guy on here, Verdantgreen I think his name was. He used to flower with a 63 watt LED and pull ozs of some of the most amazing bud you have seen. Point is, its not so much the light as the envoirment- Genetics, Nutrients, Temps, stuff like that is main stuff to focus on. Once all that is done and ready then you can always upgrade. I did, went to a 600 watt HPS, then I went back to my old LEDs why? Because I didn't think the product came out any better, just more of it. I don't want quantity, I want quality.
 

growin-Jables

Well-Known Member
The most efficient cfl' s are the 23 watt ( 100 watt equivalent) t2 cfls. They only pull 23 watts and put out 1600 lumens each. If you buy a bunch of socket splitters and do 3 bulbs per fixture . And just space them out aroumd the plants getting them as close to the plant as possible with out touching. Should be able to grow some good quality bud as long as do a good job raising them. I've seen some really impressive cfl grow that had pretty decent yields. I'm using only about 200 watts in cfls for my veg tent. Which seems to be sufficient for the 3 plants that are in there. Just remember 6500k cfl for veg. 2700k cfl for flower.
 
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