1000w MH. Is it TOO much?

I recently had someone suggest HID lighting for my 2 bubbleicious.
Below are pictures of the plants taken the day before the switch. You'll notice that one of the plants is a foot taller than the other.


Now, my hood is about 6 inches above the tallest plant. The 1000w bulb is 9 inches away from the top.
When i place my hand at the top of the plant, its not too warm, comfortable I'd say.
Also, there are NO shaded spots anymore, like the picture looks below.
It is soooooo bright down there.

As long as the leaves don't burn will the tall one be fine?
Will the short one get enough light since its 20 inches away?
Is 1000 watts too much either way?

Thanks for any help!

Get a dimmable ballast! Really can't go wrong! I often dial my 1000w system to 800w!

Looking good, I don't think it's too much.

Actually I was given this light. I'm trying not to spend another 200 bucks on a ballast.
Do you have any links to some you might suggest?

It's it necessary for me to dim it?
And, is it too much? I'd hate to give them too much, with only 4 to 6 weeks left.


Thanks again.

Is there such a thing as "too much light"?
Our, is it just the heat thing I should worry about?

Thanks, and all opinions are appreciated.

weedman24/7 said:

Actually I was given this light. I'm trying not to spend another 200 bucks on a ballast.
Do you have any links to some you might suggest?

It's it necessary for me to dim it?
And, is it too much? I'd hate to give them too much, with only 4 to 6 weeks left.

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

It is only too much light if put in a small place like say a hutch or small closet . With the smaller plant, you can raise it up and balance it out while maintaining an even canopy but it will be fine with the distance noted . It is a good idea to check the distance and temps often as they can change with the variable ambient outside temps .. Peace and have a great grow !

Professor,
You're the man! Thanks.

Raise it up.
One question on that.
I just raised it, and it seemed to make shadow areas, because the short, bushy one, is blocking light to the bottom third of both plants.
Does that matter? Or since it's a 1000w, does a few shaded areas not matter?

Thanks your helping me big time!

I worry more about heat than anything.

As far as the rest of your concerns, sounds to me like a light meter would make you really happy.

I have found that the lighting needed for healthy, vigorous vegetative growth is a lot less than you might think. I use PLL flourescents for veg. I keep them about a foot off the plants and they thrive. I have trouble keeping up with them. I have grown a plant under a single 35w spiral CFL. Honestly I would even use a T8 shop light fixture. Cheap, cool, easy to find and effective. My last round were grown out for over two months before I switched them to 12/12 and HPS. This was under a 4 bulb 2' fixture.

I still use HPS for flowering. I have a switchable ballast but I never bought a MH bulb. Been happy with the PLL's.

I can understand not wanting to change hoods/fixtures for every growth cycle. In that case I would use the lowest practical wattage.

I think I'm going to switch back to my 420w (10 x 42w) CFL's. It's like the surface of the Sun down there with the 1000w light.
I also hated more than doubling the wattage over night. It seems to me that might be too much of a power jump not to be noticed.

maybe I won't switch back...

Maybe I won't switch back...
Thanks everyone for your help and advice! I'll keep giving updates if you care...

View attachment 2756969

I think I might just leave these bad girls go underneath the monster!

I started my last run under 1000w mh from seed.

The heat is the only thing you need to worry about. Now that you're
in flower definitely leave it under the 1000w.

You definitely are going to want to raise the shorter plant up with some blocks or whatever you have laying around the house. Whatever shading that causes will be well worth it, for the short plant's sake at least. I've never worked with 1k watt, but they leave a hell of a footprint, so even if you have to move the plants apart a few inches I think that's the way to go.

I would never, never go back to CFL's now that you have yourself a 1k watt system unless you absolutely have to. Relatively speaking 1k watts isn't really all that much electricity. Most medium sized microwaves use more power than that. Then again, we usually don't run our microwaves 12 hours a day. Point being that your electric company isn't going to notice the spike if that is one of your concerns.

I'm surprised you are able to keep the top of that taller plant so close to the light especially considering you said it is like the surface of the sun down there. If it was me, I would definitely raise the shorter plant up so it is even with the taller one. If I was getting too much shading due to overlap I would, like I said, move them apart a few inches. Now, if and when you do that if you notice the far edges aren't getting light anymore I'd probably go ahead and raise the light up a few inches also. Generally speaking, you want your HID lights as close to the plants as possible without burning them, but they aren't like CFL's. They don't need to be practically touching the foliage. Especially with that 1k watter. Take advantage of its larger footprint and penetration and move them apart so there is no shading with the light high enough that all parts of the plants are being hit with light.

You have some nice looking plants there man. They look like monsters now I can just imagine what they are gonna look like by the time they are done. When do you plan on changing over to a hps bulb?

weedman24/7 said:

It seems to me that might be too much of a power jump not to be noticed.

Click to expand...

Oh, the plants will notice it, and they will respond in kind (which you have already found out).

The light is as far up as it can go, basically. It's only a7' ceiling, and I have to leave 6-8" in between the finished ceiling and the hood. The hood puts out so much heat that I can't get it closer to the ceiling without a fire issue. I have a separate fan blowing air in between the hood and the ceiling to keep the heat down.
I have raised the shorter one already to even the canopy. Thanks for that info!

I know ideally a HPS lamp would be best for flower, but I'm not sure I can put one in my set up.
The 1000w system I received is an old parking lot light & ballast. I'd say probably from the 80's.

Will I be able to put a HPS bulb in it?

If so, I'll do it in a heartbeat.

My understanding is that a magnetic hps ballast can sometimes run mh bulbs, but magnetic mh ballast generally won't fire hps lamps due to the fact that it lacks an ignitor. There is also something called a mh conversion bulb that is used in a ballast designed to run hps bulbs, but to my knowledge they don't make them the other way around. If you look at a switchable mh/hps magnetic ballast, basically what the switch does is is run a capacitor AND ignitor in hps mode, and the switch jumpers over the ignitor in mh mode. So to make a short story long, no, I do not think you can run a hps bulb in your rig. Maybe someone with a better understanding might chime in. While I do have an electrical/electronics background, I admit HID lighting isn't my specialty.

Do keep us updated. The general paradigm is that mh during flowering produces buds that tend to be fluffy and leafy due to the blue spectrum, but I never actually seen it firsthand.

BTW that is smart of you to recognize the heat the top of that thing is putting off and keeping some distance from the ceiling. Wish all growers were that cognizant of stuff like that.

I've fixed magnetic ballasts when I worked at a grow shop. The way we always found out if it was a bad capacitor or ignitor
was to put a MH bulb on a HPS specific ballast. If the MH fired, the ignitor was bad. HPS NEED an ignitor.

The plants look like they're much happier under that 1000w and I'm sure you'll get a better harvest.

Regarding HPS/MH for flowering, pretty much EVERYONE will say use HPS. It has a more red balanced spectrum (2000-3000k)
which "mimics the oranges in the fall months" - What MANY people fail to take into account is PAR light. (Photosynthetically Active Radiation)
The SUNS spectrum never really changes. Plasma lights / Hortilux BLUE / SOME Custom LEDs have much MUCH higher PAR than HPS.
In fact, Hortilux BLUE has a higher "relative energy" in the 630/660nm wavelength range than their SUPER HPS.

That being said, a standard MH will not do as well as a solid HPS. I am in the process of setting up a 2k sealed setup that will use
2000W and put out 266,000 lumens of FULL SPECTRUM using specific MH bulbs. MH also put off more heat (more blue spectrum) AND UV
light (which is thought to increase resin production). I may have to run 1k PAR MH and 1k HPS and compare results.

Thanks fellas! That is some helpful stuff!
Here's a few pics for ya!
They've exploded since the switch over!

Also, if you're never grew Nirvana's bubbleicious, this stuff smells like great weed, mixed with dog shit.