Help with Lights?

Hey Guys first off it' going to be my first grow.

I currently purchased 2x CFL bulbs at 200w Cfl 6400k and. 2700k both at 6000 Lumens each. Just so I can learn the ropes of plant needs, and get a handle on growing for personal use. Without worrying about burning my house down lol.....

But I would like to buy 250w HPS for both grow and veg. Could someone tell me if it's possible to get a 250w HPS bulb in 6400k and a 2700K. If so - can they send me a link, Ive searched google and couldnt find any. Reason I want 250w is because I'll be running an experiment in a tent thats 80cm x 80cm by 160cm or 2.6 foot x 2.6 foot and 5.4 foot. Which don't leave a lot of room for height seeing as I want hang my HPS around 20-30cm from the plants and go into flower after 2 weeks veg, or space will become a big issue lol. But it's under my stairs so height was a restriction to begin with. Also in such a small tent, how would I get my plant to be like this image???

It said super cropping and I have YouTube'd it. But is there other techniques that would out weight this one in such a small tent space? Or how would you start with something like that. I could veg longer if the plant stayed at that height. Increasing my yield. But for now I need better gear. I think 400w would be to high for a 2.6 tent and being my own home owner I don't want to take the risk of it being under my stairs lol.

High EvansInUK

Google 'ScroG'. Could get a much bigger yield than the plant in the pic doing a proper ScroG. That will control your height and give a nice flat canopy. If the grow goes well you could easily get 3+ oz of pot off one plant.

A 400 would be better than a 250 and won't make that much more heat. I run mine 8-12" above the canopy but I have a room so I can have a fan blowing between the light and the canopy too. I also have a light mover so I can get even closer if I want to.

If the ballast can be kept outside the tent it will reduce the heat some as well. LEDs might save some heat and use less electricity but I'm not into those so you might want to do a little reading in the LED forum before you decide on a light.

One of those newer 315w CMH lights would be just the ticket and should give you good coverage in the size tent you want to use. Could you grow under there without a tent? Might be less restrictive and you can always use some of the black and white plastic, Panda Film, to wall off a section to reflect light back to the plants. The money you save not buying a tent should pay for a 315.

Hello and thanks for the reply. Sadly I already own the tent as I didn' want convert my cupboard. I' currently single and if I ever decided to settle down again then I could simply remove it with ease as that' why I bought the tent. I'e looked at sea of green and scrog but as it's my first attempt I was little nervous. I should be getting seeds tomorrow so I'll be on my way soon enough. I opted for low 200w cfl's as my first grow just to keep the cost down as I wasn' expecting a high yield on my first attempt but was more for the fun side of it and practice but I will definitely read more into it if I can get a nicer yield than this plant. I thought that, that was a nice grow lol.

Do you happen to know what the highest colour blue and red hps are sold in? I found a nice 250w Metal hallide bulb for now. I'l gradually up the bulbs when I know what heat I'm running in there. I know there is probably not much more heat from a 250 to 315 but I want to control my environent first and slowly work my way up. I'm in no rush and just want to get tidy yields but when I'm feeling safe that my house won't burn around me haha...

Evan if you want to go down the HID lighting route what you want is a 250w hps for flower and a Metal halide bulb for veg. Its the MH that gives the high kelvin (high blue spectrum)

But as OMU said, a 315 cmh would also be great and to be honest the overall spectrum on Ceramic metal halides is far superior for both veg and bloom.

They also do a dual spectrum HPS which has more blue, just google sunmaster dual spectrum. Not sure if they do a 250w version as ive only used the 600s.
But still if its a choice between 250w of MH of dual spec HPS for veg only I would go MH all day long.

That's a ceramic metal hallie right? I wasn' sure about that path but I guess it' pretty much HID and HEAT anyway lol. I wasn't sure what temps they run. But you'd say a 315w would be ample or more than ample for my tent size. I'm looking for that sweet spot so I don't waste loads of hard earned money on unneeded things. I know cfl' are.not great but like I said I just want a bit of fun with finding out my temps and nutes and the whole process.

For training supper cropping is a good way to go, also look up mainlining.
You cant beat scrog for low plant count high yield and you cant SOG for high plant count and yield

coreywebster said:

They also do a dual spectrum HPS which has more blue, just google sunmaster dual spectrum. Not sure if they do a 250w version as ive only used the 600s.
But still if its a choice between 250w of MH of dual spec HPS for veg only I would go MH all day long.

Click to expand...

Metal Halide that good or just because the spectrum they run. Yeah my mates running a 400w metal hallde and 600hps not sure what It's their running at though. Could anyone point out a really quiet fan? YouTube and Google is just littered with hyper max I need a decent extractor because my neighbours will hear it otherwise and thats not nice if their meant to sleep at some point during their day/night life.

OldMedUser said:

High EvansInUK

Google 'ScroG'. Could get a much bigger yield than the plant in the pic doing a proper ScroG. That will control your height and give a nice flat canopy. If the grow goes well you could easily get 3+ oz of pot off one plant.

A 400 would be better than a 250 and won't make that much more heat. I run mine 8-12" above the canopy but I have a room so I can have a fan blowing between the light and the canopy too. I also have a light mover so I can get even closer if I want to.

If the ballast can be kept outside the tent it will reduce the heat some as well. LEDs might save some heat and use less electricity but I'm not into those so you might want to do a little reading in the LED forum before you decide on a light.

One of those newer 315w CMH lights would be just the ticket and should give you good coverage in the size tent you want to use. Could you grow under there without a tent? Might be less restrictive and you can always use some of the black and white plastic, Panda Film, to wall off a section to reflect light back to the plants. The money you save not buying a tent should pay for a 315.

Click to expand...

Thanks for this. I'm not a fan of LED's yet. Migro looks ok but I think there is still a while in upgrades to be made before I ever walk that path.

coreywebster said:

For training supper cropping is a good way to go, also look up mainlining.
You cant beat scrog for low plant count high yield and you cant SOG for high plant count and yield

Click to expand...

Funny enough I just finished mainlining and super cropping vids. I'l try them and buy a scrog setup little later on. See how the results go. What' your setup guys ?? If you don' mind me asking.

EvansInUK said:

That's a ceramic metal hallie right? I wasn' sure about that path but I guess it' pretty much HID and HEAT anyway lol. I wasn't sure what temps they run. But you'd say a 315w would be ample or more than ample for my tent size. I'm looking for that sweet spot so I don't waste loads of hard earned money on unneeded things. I know cfl' are.not great but like I said I just want a bit of fun with finding out my temps and nutes and the whole process.

Click to expand...

Yeah CMH is good, especially in a 2.5x2.5 , basically though watts are watts are heat. More you have the hotter its going to be.
Either way you will need an extraction fan and filter.

Another option would be to cut the watts by using a good LED, I don't mean a bluple amazon special.
135-150w of quantum board or equal quality LED would do the job.

Still need to extract that heat though man and exchange that air though, no matter what.

EvansInUK said:

. What' your setup guys ?? If you don' mind me asking.

Click to expand...

Im currently on some down time. But ran a perpetual HPS set up in 4x8 flower with 4x4 veg tents until I switched to LED 1-1.5 years ago.

Welcome to RIU BTW.
Im in the UK myself.

EvansInUK said:

Hello and thanks for the reply. Sadly I already own the tent as I didn' want convert my cupboard. I' currently single and if I ever decided to settle down again then I could simply remove it with ease as that' why I bought the tent. I'e looked at sea of green and scrog but as it's my first attempt I was little nervous. I should be getting seeds tomorrow so I'll be on my way soon enough. I opted for low 200w cfl's as my first grow just to keep the cost down as I wasn' expecting a high yield on my first attempt but was more for the fun side of it and practice but I will definitely read more into it if I can get a nicer yield than this plant. I thought that, that was a nice grow lol.

Do you happen to know what the highest colour blue and red hps are sold in? I found a nice 250w Metal hallide bulb for now. I'l gradually up the bulbs when I know what heat I'm running in there. I know there is probably not much more heat from a 250 to 315 but I want to control my environent first and slowly work my way up. I'm in no rush and just want to get tidy yields but when I'm feeling safe that my house won't burn around me haha...

Click to expand...

If big yields aren't your goal at this point then you can go with the CFLs and from what you learn from that decide whether to ramp things up. If the bug bites you you'll waste all your time researching and trying new things. Time well wasted IMO.

For a fan you could get by with a simple duct fan tho they don't have much pulling power if you later add a carbon filter tho with an oversized filter you would have much less resistance and it might be adequate. Most hardware stores carry them in 4, 5 and 6" sizes. If you're worried about noise you should be concerned about smell too. For the CFLs it should be good enough but if you get HID or the CMH you'll likely need something stronger.

There is a huge variety of grow bulbs for MH and HPS. Right now I'm running a 940W Hortilux conversion bulb that gives me flowering light from a 1000W metal halide ballast. I bought that bulb when I only had a MH ballast but last summer I picked up a 1000W MH/HPS ballast and it's running off it on the MH setting. All my ballasts are the older type coil and core magnetics. That conversion bulb costs twice as much as what the regular Hortilux Super HPS goes for so when it goes I'll use one of the other bulbs I have.

I also have 1 - 400w MH, 3 - 400w HPS and a couple of 150w HPS and a variety of CFL and LED bulbs I can use for different stages of growth. All sorts of stuff in my grow journal about what I have going on.

I did DWC in RubberMaid tubs for about 50 tubs worth over the last 17 years since moving to northern Alberta along with hundreds of plants grown in soil, soilless and a mix of both. DWC ScroG has got me half a pound off one plant with almost the same amount of sugar trim and popcorn buds.

Sticking to growing in pots of soilless with hydro nutes for now. I'm getting into hi-CBD pot and breeding my old favourites with with a mainly CBD girl to try to get them in CBD added versions. I took over the upstairs spare bedroom to veg plants in and dedicating the grow room in the basement for flowering only. Nice and cool down there and everything is set up to control the environment. 7 plants flowering in there now so it's fairly crowded. 32 days into budding and hoping for around a pound off them. Starting to get stinky so time to hook up my new carbon filter. I live in the sticks so no close neighbours but the wife sells eggs and different people always dropping by so it's time to hide the smell.

If you need some pot related reading material there's tons here.

I found a great spot to download FREE POT BOOKS. I downloaded a grow bible first and got lots more. Books look great and complete like the real ones I have here. No web site but just a page of links. Just right click on what you want and then "Save Link As" to download so they don't open first as some are 50+ megs. They got lots. Enjoy.

Do CMH and MH run at the same temp? Which brands do you guys run with? Oh and sun blaster do have a 250w dual bulb I noticed it before we started talking but got carried away.

Wow so your a long time grower then and experienced lol. I fancy this scrog I'm not sure what a DWC Scrog is so I'll Google this when I get break in work thanks for the help guys. My first grow is just my learning. Curve, second I want focus on yield and 3 I want to.focus on quality/yield even if yield is slightly lower. I just want get the basics nailed and to the right temps and I'll be happy. If I can figure this I might go and get the bulbs before the flower stage and try to get ad much as I can. I read about SMC-90 for bugs. Mould is a humidity thing. Soil I'm trying to get MIRACLE GROW ORGANIC POTTING MIX but it' not sold here in the UK and I can' get it off American Amazon even though they said they would ship it if paid the costs and the seller was happy to send it, but unfortunately the Amazon website still says it.wont deliver to me. So think I'm going with plagron I think it' called a light mix with perlite.

coreywebster said:

Im currently on some down time. But ran a perpetual HPS set up in 4x8 flower with 4x4 veg tents until I switched to LED 1-1.5 years ago.

Welcome to RIU BTW.
Im in the UK myself.

Click to expand...

Thank you. It' my first forum I'e ever joined. Found a few helpful guys on this when researching off Google. I found 2 in this post. Uncle Ben seems another. But him I've only seen what' he' commented on others struggles.

I was trying to find miracle grow shake n feed for trees and ferns... 18-6-12 but they don' sell it here in UK.. I really fancied those numbers for veg lol.

OldMedUser said:

High EvansInUK

Google 'ScroG'. Could get a much bigger yield than the plant in the pic doing a proper ScroG. That will control your height and give a nice flat canopy. If the grow goes well you could easily get 3+ oz of pot off one plant.

A 400 would be better than a 250 and won't make that much more heat. I run mine 8-12" above the canopy but I have a room so I can have a fan blowing between the light and the canopy too. I also have a light mover so I can get even closer if I want to.

If the ballast can be kept outside the tent it will reduce the heat some as well. LEDs might save some heat and use less electricity but I'm not into those so you might want to do a little reading in the LED forum before you decide on a light.

One of those newer 315w CMH lights would be just the ticket and should give you good coverage in the size tent you want to use. Could you grow under there without a tent? Might be less restrictive and you can always use some of the black and white plastic, Panda Film, to wall off a section to reflect light back to the plants. The money you save not buying a tent should pay for a 315.

Click to expand...

Hi could you explain wether it's from experience or do you have a formula for working out what lighting for a grow.space is used. Seen s fe3 various methods online some that contradict the rest.

EvansInUK said:

Metal Halide that good or just because the spectrum they run. Yeah my mates running a 400w metal hallde and 600hps not sure what It's their running at though. Could anyone point out a really quiet fan? YouTube and Google is just littered with hyper max I need a decent extractor because my neighbours will hear it otherwise and thats not nice if their meant to sleep at some point during their day/night life.

Click to expand...

Sorry missed this post.

There really are no truly silent fans. Avoid cheap ones. Go bigger than needed and use a variable transformer to turn it down, use acoustic ducting and an over sized filter. That's about the best way to go quiet. Ruck and RKV are good brands, nothing fancy but swiss bearings and German engineering. There are various silent fans, but non are silent. I used to use an airforce2 silent fan, its a true work horse but not really much quieter than my rucks. There are TD silent fans which I hear good things about. Mixed airflow fans are supposed to be quieter but they don't handle long ducts as well, so it depends on what your duct length and how many bends there will be.

You can box fans in and cut noise down more, its probably just as effective as some of these fancy fans that are built into a silencer, all the silencer is is a layer of sound muffling foam in a big metal tube.
There is a thread on here called "quiet the neighbours can hear you" its got some good practical tips, but there are certain frequencies that are hard to truly stop and fans are in that low frequency. Hence why its best to go big with everything and turn down the speed. The bigger the duct the less the airflow noise, the bigger the filter the less resistance and strain on your fan, also the filter last longer.

EvansInUK said:

Hey Guys first off it' going to be my first grow.

I currently purchased 2x CFL bulbs at 200w Cfl 6400k and. 2700k both at 6000 Lumens each. Just so I can learn the ropes of plant needs, and get a handle on growing for personal use. Without worrying about burning my house down lol.....

But I would like to buy 250w HPS for both grow and veg. Could someone tell me if it's possible to get a 250w HPS bulb in 6400k and a 2700K. If so - can they send me a link, Ive searched google and couldnt find any. Reason I want 250w is because I'll be running an experiment in a tent thats 80cm x 80cm by 160cm or 2.6 foot x 2.6 foot and 5.4 foot. Which don't leave a lot of room for height seeing as I want hang my HPS around 20-30cm from the plants and go into flower after 2 weeks veg, or space will become a big issue lol. But it's under my stairs so height was a restriction to begin with. Also in such a small tent, how would I get my plant to be like this image???

It said super cropping and I have YouTube'd it. But is there other techniques that would out weight this one in such a small tent space? Or how would you start with something like that. I could veg longer if the plant stayed at that height. Increasing my yield. But for now I need better gear. I think 400w would be to high for a 2.6 tent and being my own home owner I don't want to take the risk of it being under my stairs lol.

Click to expand...

Supercrop/lst/defoliation, no topping is how I get compactness. I.e., not scrog, the opposite. These plants were not topped at all. (lighter green one is a baby showing initial lateral development)

EvansInUK said:

Thank you. It' my first forum I'e ever joined. Found a few helpful guys on this when researching off Google. I found 2 in this post. Uncle Ben seems another. But him I've only seen what' he' commented on others struggles.

I was trying to find miracle grow shake n feed for trees and ferns... 18-6-12 but they don' sell it here in UK.. I really fancied those numbers for veg lol.

Click to expand...

Stay the hell away from anything Miracle-Gro! That fertilizer for trees and ferns will be loaded with toxic heavy metals as it's not made for growing things you're going to eat. If you are going to use ferts not specifically for pot get something made for tomatoes or other edibles. Got to watch those NPK numbers too. There are powdered nutrients that work well like Jacks or Peter's Professional. One of the sponsors here sells a dry fert that a lot of guys here are using now called Mega Crop. Getting rave reviews and is a one part fertilizer. Not sold in the UK tho.

I'm not familiar with all the things guys use over there but Bio-Bizz or something comes to mind for soil and nutrients. I tutored a Scottish guy through his first grows thru private messaging at another site. He has serious learning difficulties so it took a lot of explaining. Was just on chatting with me a couple days ago and is doing great now. He uses that Bio stuff and likes autos.

Have you got any hydro stores or large garden centers near by? Tell them you want to grow some tomatoes in pots on your balcony and want some decent soil and maybe some fertilizer and that should steer you in the right direction. With decent soil you won't even need nutes for most of the grow.

EvansInUK said:

Hi could you explain wether it's from experience or do you have a formula for working out what lighting for a grow.space is used. Seen s fe3 various methods online some that contradict the rest.

Click to expand...

For HID lighting a 400w will do up to 3x3, 600 - 4x4 and 1000 - 5x5'. Different styles of hoods will also affect the footprint of your light. Two lights equal or greater than the output of one larger light will give you better coverage than a single light source but with air cooled hoods it would be hard if not impossible to fit two in a small tent. I use open Adjust-A-Wing type reflectors tho I have a big glassed-in air cooled hood. I find it has too small a footprint for my liking. I rigged up a socket at the other end and can put two bulbs in it to get a lot more light out of it but the footprint again is too small.