Which T5's

roldgoldrlg said:

I love T5HO, originally for my aquarium and pulled it for emergency clone/veg light and was really impressed. I've only vegged with em, but wouldn't hesitate to flower under them. I just saw a T5VHO ballast on c.l. haven't tried those. I continue to use the aquarium T5HO bulbs due to the color spectrum, and a theory that they project more lumens deeper because they are designed to penetrate water. (Theory). They are fluval hagenView attachment 3205786View attachment 3205788

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I've had the advantage of using 400w MH, a 250W mh, and 2' T5HO's...


Hands down, the T5's are able to be put closer to the tops of the plants and are making MUCH more compact growth than the MH's EVER did. However, the plants have to be dead center under the light or the outer plants on the edge of the light grow smaller, stretch a bit more and seem to always end up a bit weaker than the ones directly under the center.

BenFranklin said:

I've totally ditched my 400 and 250mh, I only use T5's for Vegging now.. I just got them like 3 weeks ago, and the growth in comparison to my 250mh is astounding.

My mother plant looks like Arnold Scwarzenegger. (LOL! I almost forgot to include the word 'plant'....)

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Definitely impressive T5 action in progress. Almost forgot "plant" funny!!

I'm actually in the opposite shoes as OP... I had a T5 setup for both veg/flower and I'm finally biting the bullet to go all LED...

I had a single BadBoy 8 bulb unit in a 4x4 tent with a 6" inline fan/filter for ventilation.... and heat management was still a challenge... I couldn't even put my 2nd light in there (another 8x54w) - and this was fall/winter weather - without hitting 90+ or even higher from what I saw...

I wish I had just focused all my time & money into LED from the git'go... I'm just sitting on my T5 fixtures for now since I can't get much out of them resale wise and they may come back into use for veg only "some day"... but even now I've cobbled together a homebrew veg fixture using hardware store only supplies (20/21w PAR38 floods in 4000k/4100k mix x 8 and some cheap fixture hardware/wiring/etc)... Runs cool as can be...

I'm just now testing out the room with 3 new LED fixtures for 450w total... with the existing T5 fixture going and it's barely raising my rooms temp from what it previously hit...

Unless you've got ventilation dialed in and have thermal capacity to spare... LED is the only way to go IMO...

Right on brother. I totally agree with you on the LED lighting. I wish I had seen the lush lighting posts on Facebook earlier, I would've focused towards led. Definitely putting money aside already. The temperature issues are worth it alone. I haven't even started up my 600w, I have a cool tube and a 365 cfm vortex s-line exhaust, and I'll still have to run it at night. Temps and humidity make a HUGE difference in health, yield and quality. Keep it up bud, look forward to updates.

I love LED. They also use significantly less electricity to run too. They are just so damn expensive. My 200w full cycle california light works cost me about $350 i think. Now they only make a 220w for about $450. If I want any kind of good results I need at least the 440w and it is running about $900. I can't afford anything like that right now.

I am leaning towards something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Apollo-Horticulture-GLK600LS24-Digital-Dimmable/dp/B005ECZQTY/ref=pd_sbs_lg_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1JDSWR1V37A6753YAFWW

I feel ya, the lush lights are running from 1000-3000, check out lush lighting on Facebook if your on their, growers are posting results and they do giveaways and discounts etc..worth a look just to see the day to day updates on the led through full cycles.

BenFranklin said:

I've had the advantage of using 400w MH, a 250W mh, and 2' T5HO's...


Hands down, the T5's are able to be put closer to the tops of the plants and are making MUCH more compact growth than the MH's EVER did. However, the plants have to be dead center under the light or the outer plants on the edge of the light grow smaller, stretch a bit more and seem to always end up a bit weaker than the ones directly under the center.

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I was thinking the same thing re weaker plants on the perimeter but my last couple of runs were pretty much the same with a couple of the bigger plants at the ends of the tubes. Every time I think I've got a pattern figured out it changes lol. Growing from seed seems to be a magical mystery tour of wonderment lol.

waterdawg said:

I was thinking the same thing re weaker plants on the perimeter but my last couple of runs were pretty much the same with a couple of the bigger plants at the ends of the tubes. Every time I think I've got a pattern figured out it changes lol. Growing from seed seems to be a magical mystery tour of wonderment lol.

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Yeh, it's been 2 weeks flowering under the 1000w, the runt of the litter is trying VERY hard to catch up, but, I don't think it's going to. It's staying about 6-8 inches shorter than the others. These were 3 clones. 2 are identical to each other, the other one looks liker the other 2, but much shorter. =)