150w hps questions

hello everyone... im new to your little community as of tonight.

a buddy of mine was no longer in need of his 150w hps sunsystems ballast/bulb so he told me that i could give it a try.

i have done quite a bit of research on what i could potentially do with this light, but am seeming to find many conflicting answers.....

the general concensus seems to be that this isnt very effective for much more than a plant or two. but im not willing to accept that and give up after only a night of research.

when he gave it to me, i had this vision in my head of about 5-6 nicely sized females in my closet, since my space for growing is pretty much unlimited at this point... but that vision seems to be fleeting quickly.

so i guess my questions are these...

who else uses a 150w hps bulb?
how many plants are you currently using it to grow?
what kind of yeilds are you getting? (with what strains)?

and if i wanted to grow 6 good sized females, is there anything i could do to supplement my current lighting rig (i.e. cfl's) to get to that point? or would i pretty much just need another 150w hps?

thanks in advance guys

define nice sized and good sized for me.

You could use the 150w for top lighting and then throw 6-7 42w CFL's lower down. It all depends on what your meaning of good sized is. Just don't expect a pound of one plant.

TBH I'd just do 2 plants, no bigger than about 18 inches as the light will not penertrate that far, You could possibly get away with doing 3 plants but you would need some side lighting (cfls) for the lower leaves and round the edges,

Personally id go with lowryder strains and exspect 20-40 Grams a plant depending on grow methods.

darkdestruction420 said:

define nice sized and good sized for me.

Click to expand...

sorry... I now realize how vague those statements are...

I guess by nice/good I meant between 1.5'-2.5'.

hope that clears things up.

I was really hoping to grow an indica strain...

if I grew lowryders would I be able to do more than 2 plants at a time?

2-3, if you add some cfls for side lighting. I suggest you go a different route and do a scrog though, it will maximise the amount of light the plant gets. 150w will suffice for a while but you should start adding cfls when you can imo.

150wHPS said:

I was really hoping to grow an indica strain...

if I grew lowryders would I be able to do more than 2 plants at a time?

Click to expand...

i wouldnt worry about the number of plants you can grow so much, even if you put more in their you will just get more smaller plants instead of less bigger plants.

yeah... I mean I realize that this is a hobby that I'm probably going to putting a decent amount of money into, so I will definitely be getting some cfls when I can afford them.

I guess I was just wondering if I could actually expand my potential growing area with these "cfls", or if they were just going to be supplementary to my 150 and make my existing grow area more light efficient?


hope that makes sense.

they would work best as supplementary lighting. if your going to invest a decent amount of money you should get a 400w hps, then you can grow 6-8 plants like you wanted.

1 plant per 150w light check out mine

thanks for the help guys.....

I think I'm going to follow Kolorblind's method of growing autos under the 150... As for strain, I am going to go with short stuff's himalayan blue diesel.

I'm going to try for 5 females since Kolor had no problems with 8... I think that the last 4 being very short was probably in direct correlation with the light being too little. Hopefully I can get 5 nice full little autofems.....

once again thanks for the help and any advice/suggestions on the new info that I provided is welcome as well.

shooting for a yield of about 3oz.