Light question

how much light is needed to flower 3 plants in a medium size fish tank with lots of reflective paper (mylar?)? the lights would be no more than a few cm away from the plants. The plants will have a total of about 80w and about 4000 lumens during vegitative stage. for the flowering stage the plan is a total of 140w and 8,000 lumens. because the light placement will be only a few cm away from the plants is it still necessary to purchase aditional lights?

ive got 7 cfls all at 20 watts but all of them 2gether will make 11000 lumans, ive got 2 cheese plants but its my first time aswell, hope this helps let us no m8t how u get on(peace)

I have read that you want to have at least 3000 lumens per square foot so if your grow space is 1 foot by 2 feet you should be ok but the more the light the better. My grow space is just under 2X3 and right now I've got about 23,000 lumens going, and I will probably add more soon.

Check out my grow! Suggestions, comments, and questions welcome...

http://https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/51756-lowryder-2-cfl-s-my.html

ur gonna need alot of lights......i started with a cfl grow...I flowered 3 plants with 13 soft white cfls, used around 300w,,,,looked ok....picked up a 250w hps 33000 lumens and it went crazy,,,1 thing i noticed well first i'm using less wattage and also the heat was lower....my closet was 90-100 with cfl and eve since adding the hps its 83-87.

sunny d-so u would have used an hps from the jump not cfls

vega- im gettin ready for my 1st cfl grow. from what ive been studyin and hearin 9 cfls should definintely work and of the 9 2should be warm cfl and 7 white. thats for veggin. for flowerin consider 7 warm then 2 white cfl. the more watts the better. lumens for veggin should b 6500k and for flowerin and for flowerin 2700k. other than that look @ any and all othr cfl grows and compare. take your time and dont let it rattle your brain too much

sunny- how big a space were u workin wih and were u able to get temps down w/cfls

six8 said:

sunny d-so u would have used an hps from the jump not cfls

Click to expand...

for sure.... i flowered for 6 weeks with cfls,, 3weeks with hps and the difference was crazy, most def flower hps from start to finish.

six8 said:

sunny- how big a space were u workin wih and were u able to get temps down w/cfls

Click to expand...

my closet is 3x2x6.... what i tried to do was always leave the door cracked while lights were on, but i had a bunch of frozen water bottles in the freezer and i would place one infront of my fan and have it blow cold air in the closet

thanks for the input everybody it did help a lot.