Let's Talk About Flowering With Tubes

Trying to get together those of us on RIU who flower with tubes. It would be nice to have a thread to learn from each other and also help those who want to give it a go.

My first thoughts on relevant information:

1. Fixture(s)
2. Ballast
3. Type of Tube(s)
4. Color Mix
5. Distance from lights
6. Side lighting (if any)
7. Grow techniques (Topping, Training, Natural, Supports)
8. General info about the room and environmental variables.

I know of at least one grower who can provide some serious info on a tube set-up and provide suggestions for other content on this thread (RM3 I'm looking at you.) but I'm sure there are more of us so let's make it happen.

If it's alright with those interested in this thread, let's start out by developing the list of the things we want included on the list before posting information about our own grow rooms.

Before CFLs I would use tubes. One plant at a time. One double tube fixture across and up to four vertically. Close as possible. Kept me in low orbit for many years. One tip; Replace the fixtures after every grow- the ballasts grow weak.

better yet get you a some HID lighting and do it right

What a surprise, off topic right after kick-off. I had a hunch that this would be an easy target for those unwilling to tolerate something as weird as tubes. I'll try my best to keep it simple.

To quote myself: "Trying to get together those of us on RIU who flower with tubes."

Rhetorical Question: If that's not you, why post here?

Second Rhetorical Question: If that's not you, why read and post in a forum called CFL/Fluorescent Lighting?

• Rhetorical: (of a question) asked in order to produce an effect or to make a statement rather than to elicit information.

drolove said:

better yet get you a some HID lighting and do it right

Click to expand...

Because your HID can't make fire without some help

SwankyDank said:

What a surprise, off topic right after kick-off. I had a hunch that this would be an easy target for those unwilling to tolerate something as weird as tubes. I'll try my best to keep it simple.

To quote myself: "Trying to get together those of us on RIU who flower with tubes."

Rhetorical Question: If that's not you, why post here?

Second Rhetorical Question: If that's not you, why read and post in a forum called CFL/Fluorescent Lighting?

• Rhetorical: (of a question) asked in order to produce an effect or to make a statement rather than to elicit information.

Click to expand...

rhetorical or not i find posts in the "new posts" section and dont pay any attention to what section its in. just trying to help out the growers that dont know any better yet. get as mad as you want but you cfl guys will learn the hard way your house lights are shit for growing. if you want to grow some good herb with some good yields, get lights made for growing. thats why they make them, good luck with your toys

hey drolove: Thanks for that info. I didn't know that there was a separate section for new posts.

It's always tough to interpret typing but just so you know I rarely get mad and surely am not mad about your post. The response is more of an attempt to keep further such posts from clogging up a serious effort (by me) to learn about how I grow. If you care to take the time I have a post on my personal blog explaining a few things about my own choices.

https://www.rollitup.org/Journal/Entry/i-know-why-i-grow-so-leave-it-alone.30629/unread

That explains a bit of why I have tubes.

More important is that I'm first and foremost an outdoor, vegetable gardener and second an indoor cannabis gardener. So I already had the gear from years of producing my own plants during pre-season in order to save myself hundreds of dollars on crappy, root-bound plants from the market. Two small changes and one new addition enabled me to grow plants to flower rather then just start plants for outdoors.

Anyway, keep it simple and grow for your own reasons not mine.

IMO you should simply talk about and compare lights. When you start getting into different styles and grow room setups you are skewing the possibilities unless side by side demonstrations are done.

Lots of growers buy a light based on price, ease of use, something they read online etc.
Post a question in a forum, with an ebay link, Will this work for 2 plants and how much will I get ,,,, We all have seen these threads LOL

The best thing a new grower can do is stay away from grow/hydro stores !!!!!!!!!!!

Think outside the box, apply a bit of logic and common sense to your idea or notion and BAM you just might hit a nail on the head

Examples,,,, When I decided to play with LED's I did not look at grow forums or grow stores for possibilities, rather I went with a stage spot light designed to throw a 12 foot spot at a distance of 25 feet. In the grow I did with it I mounted it 5 feet above the canopy and got a 4 foot spot that was enough for one plant. This was a 50 watt LED light cost was $259 and it outgrew a 400 watt CMH in a side by side by A LOT ! (there are pics in my ICMAG thread)

Though the results of this test grow were astounding, the cost to cover my whole garden was like $3200 and I was not gonna go there. But with in mind to get serious about growing with T5's is not cheap, my 8 tube Veg light is grow store one that I got for $250 and the first thing I noticed out of the box was how terribly cheap it was !!!

Just as I had gone outside the box for my LED test, I looked at high bay warehouse lighting options for my grow setup, and found Oracle T5 High Bays

http://media.elitelightingusa.com/pdf_specs/fluorescent/cb-6-t5.pdf?1421969113

http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/pwc_li/us_en/connect/distributors/grainger/assets/GR-7044-C.pdf

Made in America, with high grade Phillips Ballast and the difference in quality was phenomenal, but better yet these lights were designed to replace HID's in warehouses with high ceilings.

Stay Tuned, More Coming

So this exactly why I wish a thread like this had been around about seven months ago.

RM3 said:

http://media.elitelightingusa.com/pdf_specs/fluorescent/cb-6-t5.pdf?1421969113

http://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/pwc_li/us_en/connect/distributors/grainger/assets/GR-7044-C.pdf

Made in America, with high grade Phillips Ballast and the difference in quality was phenomenal, but better yet these lights were designed to replace HID's in warehouses with high ceilings.

Click to expand...

Seeing some of your grows I was guessing that you had HO ballast but didn't know for sure.

I wish that when I went shopping for ballast upgrades I had known that HO was an option. I ended up buying standard ballast and so my lamp's efficiency is lower than optimal and the bulbs aren't giving out full potential. I will impatiently wait until it's replacement time so I can upgrade to HO.

Love that first link with this quote:


Outperforms conventional MH fixtures!

The 6 tube fixtures were $130 each at a regular lighting store, I bought 3 of em They are rated at 346 watts each but that includes the ballast with 54 watt bulbs my actual wattage is 972 (18 X 54) I started with GE 4100K tubes that were $5 each and my first grow was very successful with em. So at this point I have $730 invested in lights not including any shipping or tax (the veg light came with 6500K bulbs included) Keep reading, to get FIRE cost a lot more LOL

I went this way because I wanted to experiment with various different spectrum's, with the T5 setup all I had to do was change different bulbs to lean which ones performed the best. Some of these bulbs are not cheap ! I started by adding UV I put one ATI True Actinic bulb in each fixture, they were $32 each, I bought 4 for $128, yes I even put one in veg

Right away I noticed a huge spike in potency, Next I wanted a better 6500K veg bulb so I went with PlantMax they were $17 each. I played with various red blue ratios for a few grows then added ATI Coral Plus bulbs to the mix also $32 each, as of today I have 7 of em (2 in veg and 5 in flower) for $224. You can see the spectrum's of the ATI bulbs here,,,

http://www.atinorthamerica.com/bulbs.php

The Coral Plus bulbs grow trics, if you have seen some of the pics I post then you know I get serious frost So now I'm growing more trics and they are more potent.

The arch design that I nicknamed the Tanning Booth came about because of shadows in my garden. With the light fixtures setup the way they are I eliminated all shadows and made a bit of side lighting as the design of the high bay reflectors are now intersecting. And when I take lights out flash pics you can actually see how the photons from the flash are parsed by the reflectors (such a pic attached)

I have been running this setup as it is now adjusted for 2 grows with amazing results and have had the lights for bout a year and a half with 5 completed grows and the difference in actual bud quality is amazing to say the least. I have zero regrets about the choice I made.

You can follow my grow here ,,,
https://www.rollitup.org/t/the-leprechauns-pot-o-gold.855314/

See the shorter plants on the left, with the 8+ inch colas, they were flipped 3 and a half weeks ago

cfls are just twisty t5 tubes.

T5s are just thinner T8s, and T8s are just thinner T12s.

They're all the same shit.

drolove said:

rhetorical or not i find posts in the "new posts" section and dont pay any attention to what section its in. just trying to help out the growers that dont know any better yet. get as mad as you want but you cfl guys will learn the hard way your house lights are shit for growing. if you want to grow some good herb with some good yields, get lights made for growing. thats why they make them, good luck with your toys

Click to expand...

Sorry, don't agree. You can grow some really good bud with t5. Just got a dried 5 oz. on two plants with buds over a foot long, and as big around as a beer can.

When I first decided to grow some good stuff indoors I didn't know there was this Red Sox vs Yankees mentality regarding grow lights. I just used what I already had available, which was T8 shop-lights, and dove into the deep end. Definitely did some things wrong but still got a bit over an oz from two plants and plenty of ideas to improve grow #2.

But now that I've been around the forums a bit and witnessed the various nonsensical light-fights plus the condescension (well really it's mostly about the condescension) my hard-headed norskie attitude makes me want to perform with these lights... just because. I don't understand why a stranger wants to make another stranger feel like a doink just because of lighting choices. It doesn't benefit anyone in the growing community to approach a newb and say (write) to them something like, "Hey, you're an idiot. You make stupid choices and your weed will always suck unless you change you're lights." Chip firmly on shoulder for no real reason other than wanting to know if it can be done and to see if we can prove a few people wrong.

Seeing as I haven't found more than a sprinkling of people with real, hard proof that they flower or have flowered with tubes, I really want this thread to be some thing that makes a strong case that tubes are a viable choice. So hopefully some more people show out and are willing to put there junk on the line. I'll be putting mine out there this week with full confidence that this is going to be fun.

The one time I did try to use all fluorescent tubes to flower, I did notice the extra frosting RM3 talks about, but it seemed like flowering time was longer than with HPS. It was my theory that blue light from the fluorescent tubes was increasing the resin production. (This was in 2005)

One thing you tube growers should consider is making a 730nm "sleep initiator" and setup another timer so the 730nm light comes on for 15 minutes (or less) after lights out. This gives you 1-2 hours of extra effective night length, so if your normal light cycle is 12/12, your plants will think they are getting 14 hours of darkness, while still getting the benefit of 12 hours light.

Or you could do 13/11 cycle with the 730nm pulse at lights out and the plants would thing it's more like 11/13.

SwankyDank said:

When I first decided to grow some good stuff indoors I didn't know there was this Red Sox vs Yankees mentality regarding grow lights. I just used what I already had available, which was T8 shop-lights, and dove into the deep end. Definitely did some things wrong but still got a bit over an oz from two plants and plenty of ideas to improve grow #2.

But now that I've been around the forums a bit and witnessed the various nonsensical light-fights plus the condescension (well really it's mostly about the condescension) my hard-headed norskie attitude makes me want to perform with these lights... just because. I don't understand why a stranger wants to make another stranger feel like a doink just because of lighting choices. It doesn't benefit anyone in the growing community to approach a newb and say (write) to them something like, "Hey, you're an idiot. You make stupid choices and your weed will always suck unless you change you're lights." Chip firmly on shoulder for no real reason other than wanting to know if it can be done and to see if we can prove a few people wrong.

Seeing as I haven't found more than a sprinkling of people with real, hard proof that they flower or have flowered with tubes, I really want this thread to be some thing that makes a strong case that tubes are a viable choice. So hopefully some more people show out and are willing to put there junk on the line. I'll be putting mine out there this week with full confidence that this is going to be fun.

Click to expand...

Here is a tube flowering plant. Had a 90 w ufo I also used for supplemental light. This was about 2 weeks before harvest. They beefed up even more. The main light is a 4 bulb 4' t5 and a 26true watt cfl twist bulb.

churchhaze said:

The one time I did try to uses all fluorescent tubes to flower, I did notice the extra frosting RM3 talks about, but it seemed like flowering time was longer than with HPS. It was my theory that blue light from the fluorescent tubes was increasing the resin production. (This was in 2005)

One thing you tube growers should consider is making a 730nm "sleep initiator" and setup another timer so the 730nm light comes on for 15 minutes (or less) after lights out. This gives you 1-2 hours of extra effective night length, so if your normal light cycle is 12/12, your plants will think they are getting 14 hours of darkness, while still getting the benefit of 12 hours light.

Or you could do 13/11 cycle and the plants would thing it's more like 11/13

Click to expand...

I actually run 11/13 with em and no issues with yield

Yes, but you could be getting 2 more hours of light with a similar genetic response. I think it's definitely worth trying for the price of these new 730nm led stars. What you do is get 3 stars and glue/screw them to an 1 inch aluminum flat bar. Connect it to a 700mA driver, and you have a power 730nm array you can use to experiment with.

The reason I suggest it in a flouro thread is because I think that it's one thing flouros lack. HPS glow a dim red color after shutting down, and a lot of people think that glow could be putting the plants to sleep faster, like the 730nm leds.

RM3 said:

I actually run 11/13 with em and no issues with yield

Click to expand...

churchhaze said:

Yes, but you could be getting 2 more hours of light with a similar genetic response. I think it's definitely worth trying for the price of these new 730nm led stars. What you do is get 3 stars and glue/screw them to an 1 inch aluminum flat bar. Connect it to a 700mA driver, and you have a power 730nm array you can use to experiment with.

Click to expand...

I love experiments so I might actually try that but have one experiment running now and another already planned so would be awhile

And it looks really cool!! normal red light casts dark black shadows, but 730nm, even though it looks exactly the same, makes the leaves all look white and transparent.

This is what it looks like when all other lights are off. That converts the majority of Pfr back to Pr. A lot of people have been making these bars recently, which I think is pretty cool because it makes it more than theory! I've always thought that this technology would help people who grow with fluorescent too. Other people who use the 730nm at lights out say they notice it takes 1-2 weeks off flowering time. (i've only used it once so far besides this current time)