Veg room lighting?

I have a tent with 2 600 watt hid.
I want to add a veg room so u can harvest every 2 months.

I didn't want to add alot of electricity so I thought I would do t5 lighting.

I figured if I did 2 4x2 fixtures I could cover my 4x4 net and have good veg by the time I move it to flower.

however I'm realizing that the t5 would be 860 watts. so amni just better off going with 1 600 watt hid?

Any other options? I'm nearing my electrical limit.

I veg 6 to 10 plants under 500w of t5's with no trouble. How many you trying to grow? No sense wasting electricity.

A 4 foot t5 fixture is too long for a 4 for space. The bulbs are 4ft, the fixtures are a few inches longer. Have you looked into cob led?

T5 will work but the plants won't grow as fast as they would under HID. If my choices were 500 T5 or 600 HID. I'm taking the HID every time twice son Sunday. The only time I keep anything under T5 (other than rooting clones) is when I'm "ahead" of the flower room schedule. They don't grow as tall because it's less energy. Do the math on PAR watts. HID for the win Alex!

If you go with t5 try to find uv bulbs. I've been using them for a while. They work great

i kind of thought the uv was for flowering, to make the plant grow more trichs as sunscreen, whats the point in veg?

as long as your ballast is dimmable, i'd get a 2 foot t5 fixture for very young plants, then when they get established, dial the ballast down to 50%, let them get used to that, then 75%.....

Roger A. Shrubber said:

i kind of thought the uv was for flowering, to make the plant grow more trichs as sunscreen, whats the point in veg?

Click to expand...

The company offers both flower and veg bulbs that are uv

I got agromax pure par veg high output t5s on eBay, I think I paid around $35 for 4 with free shipping. Haven't got to use them yet, but the color appears almost identical to my full spectrum cob. If they perform as well I'll be very pleased.

thats not what i asked.....

I veg 15 plants under a 12 bulb 2x4 T5 fixture with the agromax pure par bulbs. My fixture has the option to light from 2 to 12 bulbs at one time. I start out with 2 bulbs for young clones add 2 more bulbs each week. My plants look great. I also keep my mothers under an indentical fixture with 2-4 bulbs lit over 10 mothers. I have never used metal halide but I've heard that it works great. I just feel that the t5's create less heat, but I may be wrong. I would like to try 400w metal halide to compare results, but I don't feel it's worth investing in another setup right now since this is working fine.

I've seen info on which light will lead to the most active veg period. But you need to look at your limitations in your flower set up. I assume that you've run enough flower cycles to know the size limits when you flip. If your running everything from seed then go for a fast veg and it will most likely take less than the flower time to get your next run to the size you want to flip into flower. Now if you plan on taking clones from then plants you are throwing into flower and vegging them for the full flower time, you may want to slow down the growth speed during veg. I've done the clone to grow style for yrs on and off and run my veg box with T-8 bulbs to keep the plants shorter with less topping. So in the end your light choice should be paired with what you plan on doing, and the conditions you have.

i've used both, t5s do fine if you have enough of them, but you'd need a lot to equal a 400 watt mh's output. but the MH is very harsh for younger plants, even dialed down. i honestly recommend both, t5s for the first 2 or 3 weeks, then the MH dialed down to 75% for another week or two, then knock it up till the flip.

toaster struedel said:

I veg 6 to 10 plants under 500w of t5's with no trouble. How many you trying to grow? No sense wasting electricity.

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Honestly I think the question "how many plants" is irrelevant .

I will have between 2 to 3 but I'm topping and tucking/training to a 4x4 net.

so it is a 4x4 space that needs lit.

So I'm think I'm just more efficient going with a 600 with a big reflector . ...

Don't mean to sound like a dick but the whole how many plants thing has been driving me crazy lately. I see guys with more plants with less yield. I pulled 16 ounces from 3 good plants and 1 that got fucked up and had poor root sytsem....

thought we were talking about lighting a separate veg room?
nm, i see what you meant

bgmike8 said:

I have a tent with 2 600 watt hid.
I want to add a veg room so u can harvest every 2 months.

I didn't want to add alot of electricity so I thought I would do t5 lighting.

I figured if I did 2 4x2 fixtures I could cover my 4x4 net and have good veg by the time I move it to flower.

however I'm realizing that the t5 would be 860 watts. so amni just better off going with 1 600 watt hid?

Any other options? I'm nearing my electrical limit.

Click to expand...

315w CMH.

i would never recommend this for flower, but for veg, i think i'd just get a couple of these.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J19ADTI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
i have one i'm using in a 2.5x2.5 veg tent, and the plants really seem to be liking it, i say two of them would cover a 4x4, use 2/3s the juice of a 600, and produce about 20% of the heat