lighting question

I have a cabinet that is 2 x 2 x 4.5 feet tall.. Currently i am vegging & flowering w a 150 hps, and 4 supporting 6500k cfls in the corners. I had some stretching issues and the lower branches were receiving minimal light during flowering, so i had some popcorn budz near the bottom and the colas ended up growing up and past the light (even after super cropping) I went ahead an purchased a 125 watt 6500k cfl to use during veg instead. Then use it as supporting light w the hps during flower. Do you think this will help my stretching issue and help beef up the lower budz? My setup is a dwc scrog, I kept the lights as close as possible. thanks guys

It costs a hell of a lot more, but a top-end LED would be best in the closet. Less heat, great penetration and huge, dense buds all the way down. But regardless, you do need more intensity to stop the strecthing. GL

try to find a t-5 that will fit.

for what its worth i ran a 400w in a cabinet that size....

oakley1984 said:

for what its worth i ran a 400w in a cabinet that size....

Click to expand...

For the price, if you can ventilate good enough, 400w would be optimal and you shouldnt need much if any supplemental lighting.

I use a very similar setup for vegging. I found that a couple of 23W 2700K cfls really stopped the stretching. The plants want red, even in vegging. They dont need as much as they do when flowering but they will go looking for it if they don't get it.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/250-HPS-COOL-TUBE-METAL-HALIDE-400-SOCKET-EXTERNAL-WING-REFLECTOR-COOLTUBE-/190589254311?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c60013aa7
+ 4" duct fan (like a vortex)
and a digital ballast

oh i would like a small 400 watt mh / hps cool tube but I gotta make do with what I have, the last thing i want to do is throw out the 150 hps and send back the new 125 6500k.. once i upgrade to a bigger area i will splurge on the 400.. in the meantime I'm gonna grab a few 2700ks. you don't think that having the 125 on during flowering will cause MORE stretching do you.. cuz in my cabinet the buds that are around the 6500ks have the most trichs.. which makes me think that all light (regardless of spectrum) will help dense up the buds

no it should help reduce it... by adding more of the blue spectrom during flowering you should be able to tighten up your internode spacing

I was vegging under 250W of cfls (mostly 6500K and a little 2700K). Plants grew nicely with short nodes but very slowly. I switched to a 150hps and the growth took off. They grew more in a week than they had in the previous month, but the node spacing was stretchy. I added two 23W 2700K cfls and the nodes shortened from 1.25" to 0.5".

As I understand it, plants have a mechanism to detect when they are being shaded by other plants and that this mechanism is primarily triggered by lack of red light.

Anyway, two warm 23W cfls is a cheap experiment. You can always use them for household lighting if it doesn't work.

HIDs kick ass for growing dope. I used to veg and flower under a 600W hps. When I set up a separate veg cab, I tried the cfl thing but they dont compare to HIDs as a main growing lamp. I am just about to install a 250W mh.