CFL vs FLORO vs HPS

th3bigbad said:

ok outa boredom and waaay to much free time i did alil playing with lights and this is what i found out.
first off all the plants are clones cut from the same mother at the same time. they are white widow. they are all in bubblers that are exactly the same (ph,PPM,water temp, water level) everything other than the lights are exactly the same. thats a point im trying to make really clear here, cuz thats the reason for this whole post.
im growing 3 different crops in 3 different rooms. all the rooms are 4'x4'x8'(LxWxH). they are all made from panda plastic and the temps are controlled to 78 +/- 2. each room has 1, 20 gallon bubbler with 3 plants in each tub. the plants are in 5" netpots with 2" rockwool and hydroton. im useing GH 3 part with super thrive and cal/mag for nutes. i used olivia's rooting gel to start the clones, and started them all in the bubblers they are in now on 18/6 lighting.
ok now for the good stuff, in room 1 i used a 1000watt hps hortilux eye with a cool tube and bat wing reflector. room 2 had 6, 13watt CFLs with drop light reflectors. and room 3 had 2, 4' floros in a plain ole shop reflector.
ROOM1 \1x1000watt HPS/
i started the light off about 3' above the plants and lowered it every few days until it was/is at 1' above them. the plants started slow at first. much slower than the other 2 rooms. but by the time the started to grow thier 2nd set of new leaves they started to grow pretty fast. but not up to par with the CFLs.
ROOM2 \6x13watt CFLs,,, 78total watts/
i started the plants in this room with the light about 1' above them and lowered it to within 2" by the end of week 1. the plants showed improvement within 2 days and by 4 days had thier 2nd set of new leaves. the plants in this room always looked better than thier sisters in the other 2 rooms. so much so that i was shocked. even better than the HPS.
ROOM3 \2x40watt 4' long tube floros,,,, 80 total watts/
in room 3 i started the lights off about 1' over the plants, and moved it down to within 2" by the end of week 1. these plants grew noticilbly slower and skinnier than the other 2 rooms. by the end of week 1 they had hardly changed at all. by far the worst of all 3 rooms.
they are now at week 5 almost and will go into flowering in a day or two. i let them get on the big side, but i ment to so that see just how much could be grown with each kind of light. the CFLs still look far better than the other 2 rooms with the HPS not far behind. the plants in room 2 (CFL room) are bushier and have almost 2x as many nodes as room 1 (HPS room). and the plants in room 3(4' floros) are just plain sad looking.
im sure things will swing to favor the HPS room when i go to 12/12, but enough to offset the cost is what this is all about.ill keep this updated as much as i can and let yall know what i yeild off each light, and toss up some pics now and again. i have to take the plants out of thier rooms to take pics so there wont be alot, but enough that youll see the what each light is doing. hope this helps to clear the air on what is worth growing with and what works best at what stage of growth,,,, for me.
and dont go bustin my e-nadds about spelling or stuff like that,,, im buzzin like a crop duster most the time im on this site,,,,, or awake.

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th3bigbad said:

but enough to offset the cost is what this is all about........

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g0nz0 said:

With more cfl wattage do you think that it could concievably be a moderate contender to hps for the space limited individual?

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