Lighting help, please lol

Hey,

So I had a friend dump a ton of different grow light, like 10 of each kind, lol but I didn't know if I could utilize these at all and if not my local home depot and Lowes carry some 150watt and 300 watt HPS lights and I'll grab a couple of those with a ballast, but this will be my first grown in hydroponics, I'm growing just 2 auto flowers, in a rdwc, but the lights I have now are

10 of the Walmart led grow light bulbs , and 2 of the t8 led grow bulbs 1 bulb alone was like 35 dollars when I looked it up, and I found some HPS bulbs on sale at Lowes and got 3 of the 150watt bulbs,

So the question is can I use any of these in the seedling or veg or flower cycle? or do I just need to scrap it and get some 300watt hps, and I belive I saw some 300 watt cfls but wasn't sure if that was what I was needing?, and I apologize for all the new guy questions, just wanting to make sure I got everything I need, anyways thank you ahead of time.

P.s.
Sorry if I posted in the wrong spot, please move if need be, thanks !!!!!.

You need to put up some pics and maybe and inventory of what all you have. Sounds like you have enough for a couple plants already and may not need to buy anything.

150W HPS bulbs are useless without the ballasts and the ones you get at Lowes are crappy for growing plants to start with unless they are a special 150W grow bulb I've never heard of.

I've never heard of a 300W HPS either so either you remember wrong or they could be mercury lamps or some other weirdness. I have 150, 400 and 1000W in MH and HPS and even a 400W ceramic metal halide. Plenty of fluoro tubes, CFLs and LED bulbs with the tops popped off in a fixture too.

Lot of different stuff and it can be confusing so we should try to figure out what all you have first.

Sounds like he tossed you his trash after he upgraded.

Renfro said:

Sounds like he tossed you his trash after he upgraded.

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Cheaper than recycling or bringing it to the dump....

Yeah I'm gathering he gave me the stuff he didn't want or need but I'm going to use them 1 way or another, but when i get home tonight I'll post up pics of everything I got so maybe some 1 can point in a good direction with lights, and it's the last thing holding me up so I dont want to start without have everything dialed in right, so I do greatly appreciate every 1s help, thanks guys !!!!.

Ryansway said:

Hey,

So I had a friend dump a ton of different grow light, like 10 of each kind, lol but I didn't know if I could utilize these at all and if not my local home depot and Lowes carry some 150watt and 300 watt HPS lights and I'll grab a couple of those with a ballast, but this will be my first grown in hydroponics, I'm growing just 2 auto flowers, in a rdwc, but the lights I have now are

10 of the Walmart led grow light bulbs , and 2 of the t8 led grow bulbs 1 bulb alone was like 35 dollars when I looked it up, and I found some HPS bulbs on sale at Lowes and got 3 of the 150watt bulbs,

So the question is can I use any of these in the seedling or veg or flower cycle? or do I just need to scrap it and get some 300watt hps, and I belive I saw some 300 watt cfls but wasn't sure if that was what I was needing?, and I apologize for all the new guy questions, just wanting to make sure I got everything I need, anyways thank you ahead of time.

P.s.
Sorry if I posted in the wrong spot, please move if need be, thanks !!!!!.

Click to expand...

Buy a digital 600 watt dimmable iPower light kit. You’ll be glad you did 3 months later with measurable amounts of bud. Use the rest of this stuff for cloning or vegging or whatever.

Yeah I figure lo the lights I had where good for vegging I was just worried about the flowering part lol, and I will check it out, I'm on a budget and trying my best to find the best option for flowering ....... The whole lighting idea was confussing, because when I would hear people talk about high watt bulbs leds,, hps, cfl, I was thinking you could just run to Lowes or home depot to get a couple 300watt hps, or led bulbs and be good.... now I'm learning it's not that easy lol

Ryansway said:

Yeah I figure lo the lights I had where good for vegging I was just worried about the flowering part lol, and I will check it out, I'm on a budget and trying my best to find the best option for flowering ....... The whole lighting idea was confussing, because when I would hear people talk about high watt bulbs leds,, hps, cfl, I was thinking you could just run to Lowes or home depot to get a couple 300watt hps, or led bulbs and be good.... now I'm learning it's not that easy lol

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There are people on here growing with everyday household LED bulbs and CFLs.
To a degree any light will grow weed if you have enough of it.

You need to post pics and as much info as possible on what you have when you get chance.
You may be surprised

Will do for sure, thanks for the info and I am sorry about asking these dumb questions, I'm just trying to grasp the concepts and difference between bulbs

coreywebster said:

There are people on here growing with everyday household LED bulbs and CFLs.
To a degree any light will grow weed if you have enough of it.

You need to post pics and as much info as possible on what you have when you get chance.
You may be surprised

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Ryansway said:

Will do for sure, thanks for the info and I am sorry about asking these dumb questions, I'm just trying to grasp the concepts and difference between bulbs

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Don't worry about it. All sorts of different systems and I'm good on everything up to all the new LED units. I'll be looking for help if I ever decide to toss my HID units and invest in LED but that's not likely for a while.

None of us were born knowing this stuff.

Hey,

The tip pick is 1 of each of the bulbs I got, but I have multiple of these bulbs, from top to bottom I have,

2 tube t8 grow light 4ft
8 of these led bulbs, Walmart growlight
2 of these 300w led flood style light Home depot
4 of the 150watt hps
2 of these green led growlight homedepot

Oh also I forgot I have 4 of the spot light led growlight from walmart, now most of these where gave to me and I'm not sure if I can incorporate them into my grow, either as veg lights or flowering, any thoughts ?

You can use most of those to do a grow. The 150W HPS would be OK to use in flowering if you have ballasts for them but if you don't you would be better off getting a 400 - 600W ballast and a couple bulbs online for fairly cheap. I've seen them for less than $100 and I pay more than that for one bulb. Or a decent LED unit but that's going to be a lot more money.

Have you got any fixtures for the various smaller bulbs? That big LED thingy should work nicely but you'll need a reflector hood for it.

For vegging your plants when small I'd have the T8s overhead and arrange some of the other bulbs around to fill in anywhere they will fit. If you have to go out and buy reflectors and or fixtures for them then it's going to end up costing more than a decent grow light like I mentioned above.

Plenty to get you started tho.

I still use my old 8 tube T-12 fixture I built from 4 shop lights almost 20 years ago for vegging plants. can use 2, 4, 6, or all 8 depending on how many plants are under it. Looks like hell but does the job.

I have foil behind the tubes and better tubes in it for use. Was just adding the last two tubes when I took these pics.

Yeah I got a shop light fixture for the 2 tube lights, and a bunch of those reflector single bulb lights , I was trying to find the adapter that let's your plug 2 of the bulbs into 1 socket, but I haven't been able to find then anywhere, and which lights do you think would be best for veging, and flowering?

Ryansway said:

Yeah I got a shop light fixture for the 2 tube lights, and a bunch of those reflector single bulb lights , I was trying to find the adapter that let's your plug 2 of the bulbs into 1 socket, but I haven't been able to find then anywhere, and which lights do you think would be best for veging, and flowering?

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CFL and LED bulbs should have a 'K' number on them LED ones only go 2600K and 5000K so the 5000K are what you want for veg tho having a couple of 2600 mixed in won't hurt and may add some red which is also needed but mostly at flowering time.

CFLs are usually 2700K, flower, or can be 5000 and 6500K. The 6500 are really high in blue light and my fave for veg. I prefer CFLs for vegging as the 5000K LED ones seem to have less light frequencies than LED ones and don't seem to veg as well. I have an 85W, 5000K CFL and it grows plants pretty good. Better than the 11 bulb LED fixture I rigged up using 9w 5000K bulbs with the globes popped off.