Help!! I need help with a cheap light for cloning!!

I recently bought one of those ten dollar tray setups for cloning. I dont want to get to invested as I am just experimenting now, but, I was told I could use any light for the clones, even a cheapo CFL. So, I looked at some CFLs, and I was wondering should I just use one of the twisty 60 W equivalent ones (its about 14w or something) or should I go for a tube flourescent? Those have a color temp of about 4100 K, and I have also read, I think, that 6000 K is the right color temp for plants. Also, I found some blue bulbs called 'plant' bulbs. They said on the box they would make plants LOOK healthier. Is this just the way the light makes it look, or does it actually give the plant light that it needs? Or is it more of a visual optical illusion type thing? Anyway, I just eed a small light to hang over the clones while they are sprouting in the tray, under the lid. Any suggestions?

hey buddy! yea stay way from those "plant lights" you could check out my thread https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/137930-first-grow-journal-ww.html there are a few pics of my light setup using those cfl bulbs. they work great and are ideal for cloning. youll need the 100w equivelents, 26w cfl bulbs and some sort of fixture to put it in. i went to walmart and got everything i needed, how many clones are you planing on haveing? if just a few you would probably need like 2 bulbs and 2 fixtures. that should do all the way up to veging. what i have done is put a socket splitter, also got at walmart, into the fixtures so i can have 2 bulbs in each one. you will need a socket extender too because the lights wont fit inside the hood when they are spread. each of the 26w cfl bulbs gives off about 1700 lumens. if you use the spliter thats about 3400 lumens per hood. i use 1 bulb in 2 hoods for beginning, then 2 in 2 hoods for the beginning of veging till i use 2 bulbs in all 3 hoods for end vegitative growth. depending on if i get my HPs in time i might have to use them for flowering too... but with all 6 bulbs lit in all 3 hoods thats a total of 10200 lumens... not bad... just make sure that the bulbs are far enough away not to burn them but close enough to were you can feal the heat with your hand at theyre level. you should have them so close you have to move them up daily. hope i helped and if u need anything else i can see what i know.

the first time i cloned i just hung a 26 watt cfl a foot away. i read that they just need to be remindedto grow. then i had 100 percent suucess

i just totally failed at a 2nd try in rw so i am going back to the first method dwc with that 26 watt cfl.

Thank you both for your tips. I do think that Eharmony420 had it correct when he said they need only to be 'reminded' to grow, although if left under inefficient light for too long, they will stretch. So, i will probably go with 1 cfl. Also, Glassfreak, be careful when using lumens to measure your light power. Lumens has to do with how much light is produced that is visible to the naked eye. What you are looking for is candle power per foot. That is the correct rating you need to look for to see how 'powerful' your lights are. Also, color temperature makes a difference. I know 6000 Kelvin is good, but I can't tell you why. Any way, I use HPS lights, so thats why I am ignorant about CFL's. I'm sure there are many people on here that know more about this stuff than I. Anyways, thanks for your guys' replies...

just an update. I went to walmart and bought an 18 inch fluorescent light fixture and bulb for about 18 bucks. The bulkb is a daylight type with a color temp of 6500 degrees Kelvin, which I believe someone said is the correct range for growth? If anyoe can help me out on this, I would appreciate it... thanks..

yea thats the right range for growth. if you were to use them for flowering you would need 3000 or around there.

hey thanks for the tips man! how do you figure out the candle power?

i have 4 26w cfls from walmart and a 42w cfl also from walmart. what are the bulb rating on these kind of bulbs?

25$ sho9 light at homede9ot will do u nice and its t:8 lights good luck

hey glassfreak, here's what I found... Candlepower is a way of measuring how much light is produced by a light bulb, LED or by striking an arc in a Carbon-Arc spotlight. Is it a measure of how much light falls upon an object some distance away? No. That's illuminance. Is it a measure of how well we see an object that is illuminated by that light source? No. That's something all together different, and we are not going there! A candlepower as a unit of measure is not the same as a foot-candle. A candlepower is a measurement of the light at the source, not at the object you light up. Candlepower is a measure of light taken at the source-not at the target. Foot-candles tell us how much of that light is directed at an object we want to illuminate. We understand a candle radiates light equally in all directions, its output, in this consideration is not focused by any mechanical means (lenses or reflectors). Pretend for a moment that a transparent sphere one meter in radius surrounds your candle. We know that there are 12.57 square meters of surface area in such a sphere. Remember your Solid Geometry classes? That one candle (1 Candlepower/Candela) is illuminating equally the entire surface of that sphere. The amount of light energy then reflected from that surface is defined thusly: The amount of energy emanating from one square meter of surface is one lumen. And if we decrease the size of the sphere to one foot radius, we increase the reflected energy 12.57 times of that which fell on the square meter area. LUX is an abbreviation for Lumens per square meter. Foot-candles equal the amount of Lumens per square feet of area. So, that one candlepower equivalent equals 12.57 lumens. And for you figuring out LED equivalents, first you must know how many lumens your LED's each produce. Then divide that value by 12.57 and you have candlepower of the LED. You don't have foot-candles, remember foot-candles are illuminance. And we are measuring radiance. Above quoted from the article "Lumens, Illuminance, Foot-candles and bright shiny beads…." at : http://www.theledlight.com/lumens.html