T-5 HO questions.

So i got my hands on 39watt double t5-HO ballast and was curious about if i this is a good light system to grow plants with. I havent purchased the bulb or reflectors yet because im waiting on your guys input first. I tried searching for t5 info and using the faq's but no luck. So for those people that know alot about the T5's throw me the pro's and con's of this system, and wat is better then this system and whats not. Thanks guys!

From what I understand, most people use it for seedlings and veg. Not so much for flowering.

T5's are good and I have seen some impressive plants with T5 but if you only got a 2 bulb that might be ok for mothers / clones, seedlings.

i use 2 8 bulb t-5's over each 4 x8 tray. with my light meter i measure over 1000 watts at mid tray i have not flowered with them yet but they have been awesome so far. hydrofarm has a new commercial 8 bulb out that's alot cooler and cheaper around 250. i'll let u know how they do. should be flowerin in a week i hope

i use t5 for clones and seedlings, saw a nice growth increase from cfl, you would need quite a bit more watts than that for a start to finish grow, not to mention different spectrum bulbs for veg and bloom.

i'm using two diffent specrtrum bulbs red and white. 54 watts per bulb x 16 per tray. wouldn't that be enuff?

guitarzan420 said:

i'm using two diffent specrtrum bulbs red and white. 54 watts per bulb x 16 per tray. wouldn't that be enuff?

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2 bulbs will be sufficient for seedlings/clones/2-4 weeks of veg time..then you'll have to add more lumens for more growth/flowering stage

im hoping for some more information and answers to my questions, maybe someone with experience shed some light apon us who dont know.

that 16 54 watt t5 line got me excited. What you need to think about are lumens and penetration. You want 50-100000 lumens per 4x4 area. That is an average. I know the chart for hids is like a 400 for a 3x3 and 600 for a 4x4. A 4 is 50k lumens or so while a 600 is like 100k. A t5 can put out that amount of lumens but with more watts and less pene. But you save with less heat and fans and air to run. You can easily get it very close to the canopy. Most people dont use them as they pene lower and HIDs get more lumens a watt and HIDs are like shotguns when a t5 is like a really cool handgun. More money for t5 too. But I have seen lots of succesful grows with t5s all the way thru to flower but more with hids if you know what I mean. Less heat footprint with t5 also.

i have 4x4 t5 for veg it works awesome, however the t5's get hot ,at least for a flouroecesent anyway . you can burn plants if you let them get to close to the bulbs.

just bought a 100watt hps, maybe sell that ballast on ebay since it seems to be only good with cloning which i could do with a cfl