Ok here are some facts that may help me get more valuable adive from you all. Ok first my closet is 4 feet wide by 2 feet deep. Above it is an attic, below a crawlspace. I am looking at a small grow of 2 to 4 plants. I have a sun system reflector hood, I would like to house my light in. I am thinking it best to purchase a 400 or 600 MH for flowering. Just need a source whatever is used to power and get that light up in the hood. How much flourecent light and size tubes will be need for the initial setup, bulb type (cool white etc?) I hope these things will help gain more advice as I am ready to learn.
you could use a 400watt hps light in this space but heat will build up so you
WILL need to buy an inline fan to move the hot air out. please dont use a MH light for flowering as they are in the blue light spectrum and should only be used to veg your plants, you need the red light spectrum for flowering to get the best results.
the most economical thing to do is to buy a dual spectrum bulb which is good for the whole growing process as it has blue and red light spectrums. if you do a search on google and look hydroponics stores then look for 400watt universal hps lights you will find what your looking for. a light system consists of a ballast which plugs into the powerpoint on your wall, the shade which is wired with a connection to plug into the ballast and a connection for your bulb to screw into. if your shade is not wired up in this way then it is useless.
man it is hard to find dual spectrum bulbs if you are in the us, it seems that the market is flooded with MH rubbish. they may be called universal hps bulbs over in the us.
you could use flourecents but they will not produce as much as a 400watt hps dual spectrum bulb. the flourecents are used for raising cuttings mainly. here in the uk we can get the compact t5 which comes with the blue spectrum bulbs as standard but we can purchase the red spectrum bulbs that are used in the flowering phase, so you just swap bulbs when you go into flower mode. hps bulbs are the best though as they have more lumens and are more intense.