Help! Fluorescent vegging question. All help is appreciated

Hey all,

About to start first grow in the new set up. I will be vegging in a 4 foot wide by 6 feet tall and 1.5 ft deep cabinet seperated into a top and bottom compartment to start my grow. It will be stealth so i plan on using fluorescents so numerous fans will not be required for heat.

I was wondering how many fluorescents i will need to sufficiently vegg 12-15 plants. The cabinet will be seperated into a top chamber and a bottom chamber. If anyone could help i would really appreciate it. I plan on vegging atleast 6 on each level until they cannot fit anymore in the cabinet. Then i will be moving them into my flowering room which is seperate. Ive never used fluorescents b4 so i would really appreciate it. I'm not fimiliar with the amount of lumens or watts required for this amount of plants in this space using fluoros.
Thanks in advance!

your gonna need atleast 15 26 watt CFL's. are u planning on growing all those plants on CFL's from start to finish?

GoldenGanja13 said:

You know what ? I just bought a 6 bulb 4 foot t-5 set up. And it is 17.5 wide That would almost work perfectly in there.

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Where exactly did u purchase that Golden? if you dont mind me asking. that does sound perfect.

No im only planning on vegging them in this cabinet and then moving them to my flowering room when they can no longer fit in the cabinet. Ill be dividing the cabinet into a lower and upper compartment, so each compartment i want to hold atleast 6 plants each will have about roughly 2.5 ft to grow in height and hopefully enough room to grow 6 with a 4 ft wide space being 1.5ft deep. where can i buy fixtures that hold the cfls?

I got them at a place called https://www.aquaserene.com/frames/index1024.html they don't show the 6 bulb online but in the store (which is awesome) they had the 6 bulb in there. I grew with 4 bulb in veg and it was so much better than mh due to less heat and closer lights, it was a great switch.
So these 6 bulb 4 footers come with 6 blue lights and it was only $200. They have 8 bulb for another $50.

bump bump bump

anyone else have any suggestions?

T5s are more efficient at growing than store bought CFLS

Fluoros will make your cab just as hot as any HID. You have to compare watt-for-watt.

UserFriendly said:

Fluoros will make your cab just as hot as any HID. You have to compare watt-for-watt.

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The funny thing about my fluoro tubes is that the lamps themselves do not put out all that much heat but the ballasts on the other hand do!

I have a bunch of T12 fluoro's that will get really hot on the top and I also have 2 Sunblaze 44's that also get hot.

They can heat up a small grow room fairly quickly so you still need a bit of ventilation.

DownOnWax said:

The funny thing about my fluoro tubes is that the lamps themselves do not put out all that much heat but the ballasts on the other hand do!

I have a bunch of T12 fluoro's that will get really hot on the top and I also have 2 Sunblaze 44's that also get hot.

They can heat up a small grow room fairly quickly so you still need a bit of ventilation.

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Do you think I'll need to put a few cpu exhaust fans in the back of the cabinet to cool it down or do u think maybe a simple fan or two inside the cabinet will be enough to keep temps under control?

sow217 said:

Do you think I'll need to put a few cpu exhaust fans in the back of the cabinet to cool it down or do u think maybe a simple fan or two inside the cabinet will be enough to keep temps under control?

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I've been running 2 4 foot 6500k floros and 4 23watt cfls. And my moms are loving it in the same sized cabinet you have. I have a 7 inch oscillating fan in there and my temps are about 81 degrees . Hope that helps.