Full Spectrum?

Hello all,

After 3 weeks of getting my ladies to root well, I went on looking in the post for lighting information. My old time friend has been growing with a single 1000 watt hps light from beggining to end. he says t takes a little while longer but that it does the same.. I havent been to sure about that since i see people with far bigger growth than i have seen his plants. In any case... that made me think about .... do my vegging rooting ladies have enough light?

After months of planing and investigating on the HPS light that i wanted and getting all the fans and building tubs and wrapping and blah blah... actually i love this stuff... anyway... i realized that i had only boughten two 24" floros from walmart... it actually said for plant growth on them... but i had only boughten two and never paid to much attention about enough lumens... i just figured two would have been fine...


well think again... those two floros were giving me no more than 1800 lumens... seems that not enough... I had gotten good rooting growth out of them... and a couple of leaves sprouted as well... but after three weeks i thought it was too slow... so i added lumens....


I bought 8 26 watt blue spectrum cfl s from wallyworld.. giving me about 3200 lumens per sq ft... per what people say enough is 3000...

since there is good root mass on the remaining 5 ladies i decided to place them into the flowering chamber and attach my cfls to my hps light

I made sure that the hps light will be about 12 to 13 inches away from the plant... and then i made sure to install the cfls to where the bottom of the cfls would be 13 inches away from the 13 mark... basically as long as i donot have the cfl closer than 3 inches away from my ladies i know that my hps is at a perfect 13 inches way from the tops...


ok ok ... so some pics...
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.So here is how it looks with both the hps and the cfl running



this pic is only the cfls running






As you can see i have a little bit of time before the plants touch my net.... but then again they are very young still... the cfls are 5 inches away from the plants right now... and i figured they would just grow into it.... If they stretch a little it will be ok because im doing the SCROG


ok guys any comments or questions are welcome.

i guess i dont even get the usual your using too much power jerk..


quick question... i have the 400 watt hps coming on for an hour 4 times a night for the cold... that shouldnt do anything to the plant cause the cfl;s are allways on right?

I don't think turning the HPS on and off at night for heat should be a big deal during veg. Especially since you have your 208 watts of cfls on all the time. As for having to much power, it does look like you have a lot of wattage in a small space. If you aren't incinerating your plants, I wouldn't say you have to much, but I think you are at the threshold were you won't see you plants grow any faster with more light unless they are CO2 supplemented. You have ~600 watts in ~6ft^2? I've read before that 90-100 watts a square foot is the maximum plants can use before the limiting factor is CO2 levels. I've never had that much wattage per a square foot though, so I can't comment from personal experience. Good luck with your grow, it looks like a real nice setup.

Do you have them under 18/6 or 20/0? It's nice to give them a bit of dark time..they grow much better with it.

Good ingenuity though! The extra lights might or might not help, but they surely won't hurt things a bit.

What strain are you growing?

Nice grow. What was the reason for placing CFLs under HPS?

pterzw said:

Nice grow. What was the reason for placing CFLs under HPS?

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Well i have been reading alot about people doing all the grow with just a HPS light... and then the diference between 6500k and 2700k blah blah... i just figured that a upgraded bulb cost about 69.99 then shipping tax and that stuff it would probably come out to a good 100 $ easy I was able to build this setup for far less and i figured i would get the blue spectrum that i want for the vegging... and then even when its flowering i cant see that feeding the stems and such would hurt?...

people talk about stretching and stuff... but how would it be... if you have the veg stretch going on will you pump it full of red for the flowers... i figured it should do something..

Muddy Paws said:

Do you have them under 18/6 or 20/0? It's nice to give them a bit of dark time..they grow much better with it.

Good ingenuity though! The extra lights might or might not help, but they surely won't hurt things a bit.

What strain are you growing?

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i actually have the cfls running 24/0 ..... the HPS comes on for about 1 hr 5 times a night for the cold.

maybe someone can help me with the strain... my friend told me they where called " **** thunderf*ck? " So basically something-thunderf*ck

atlantadirect said:

I don't think turning the HPS on and off at night for heat should be a big deal during veg. Especially since you have your 208 watts of cfls on all the time. As for having to much power, it does look like you have a lot of wattage in a small space. If you aren't incinerating your plants, I wouldn't say you have to much, but I think you are at the threshold were you won't see you plants grow any faster with more light unless they are CO2 supplemented. You have ~600 watts in ~6ft^2? I've read before that 90-100 watts a square foot is the maximum plants can use before the limiting factor is CO2 levels. I've never had that much wattage per a square foot though, so I can't comment from personal experience. Good luck with your grow, it looks like a real nice setup.

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yeah i figured i would have enough... and i felt about the same as far as if they dont burn ..cant hurt... anyway.. CO2... i have been reading alot about making your own co2 generator with yeast and sugar... i think ill give that a try... but arent we suppose to wait to give them co2 till budding?

thx for the comments on the setup...

Ohh you have Matanuska Thunderfuck

It's often called Matanuska Tundra or Thunder. From the Matanuska Valley of Alaska, this strain gained noteriety as a popular local strain. It's up in the air about whether or not what you and I are growing is the real deal, but it's one amazing plant.

I'm growing a cross between that and Bubblegum right now!

Muddy Paws said:

Ohh you have Matanuska Thunderfuck

It's often called Matanuska Tundra or Thunder. From the Matanuska Valley of Alaska, this strain gained noteriety as a popular local strain. It's up in the air about whether or not what you and I are growing is the real deal, but it's one amazing plant.

I'm growing a cross between that and Bubblegum right now!

Click to expand...

Sweet .. so its rare?.. I mean these are clippings from bought ones from a local collective. So i think they are they real deal.. but then again.. he thought there was another strain in that batch that he gave me. So I will never know... well at least we can compare pics.

has anyone tryed those led light ufo ,if so can i get some feed back .

just fyi.. i took these lights down.. they were just causing too much heat with the 400 watt as well...