worried that i may have stunted my growth

here's what i have: the stealth hydro bubbleponics DWC set-up with 2 CFL's. it's in a closet with less than ideal ventilation, but good circulation. temps have never gone =/- 5 degrees beyond 75.

I put'm into flower on Nov. 13th so 5.5 weeks ago and i'm concerned because it seems like they haven't really grown a lot

to give a better sense of scale, these are pictures of the biggest buds and they're each about the size of a golf ball

CFLs, man. CFLs. All things being equal, light will be the limiting factor here.

how limiting?

Very. Try getting a t5 fixture or an Hid system. Talk to your local hydroponics store or pm me if you need a quote. My buddy used cfl's and it took him 2-1/2 months to get the plants 1 ft tall. Thats about 2 weeks of 400w Metal halide growth. So there you go, 2 weeks compared to 2-1/2 months. By theory you should get 4 times the amount of yield.

I might be mistaken, but isn't the lumens really the most important factor? like I understand that HID's etc. are better able to penetrate the canopy, but is this due to some magically property of those types of bulbs? or... as i suspect, is it due to the difference in light wavelengths and lumens?

for instance, it seems like i could add a bunch more CFL's (which i just did). I mean, my room and my wallet aren't currently able to invest in all the additional equipment i would need if i jumped to HID's

thank you very much for the feedback. This is my first grow and I try to keep reminding myself that it was designed to teach myself how to grow, not necessarily to have mega trees

CFL work fine for flowering, not as fast as HID's but they work and some people have great results. What watt are the cfls you are using? and for flowering use 2700k bulbs.

Agreed, more light will hellp alot. Other than that, lay off the nitrogen, and they should be fine. They look pretty healthy, otherwise.

ok just doubled my lights.
also, like 7 of the stems had fallen over after i put in those new lights. i think it's because they were stretching too fast, anyways right now my room looks like a marijuana marionette with all the support strings i tied on

umm dude, you are keeping your CFLs way too far from your plants. You need to keep them only inches away from the buds. Also switch to 2700k in order to promote budding.

How strong are thoes CFLs?

Anyhow, they should be much closer and mainly 2700K temp.

Its not lumens that count, its candlelights, and those decrease with distance at a different rate with any type of light.
HID penetrates deeper and stays strong enough much further from the bulb compared to CFLs, even if the same wattage is used.

Lt. Fydor said:

I might be mistaken, but isn't the lumens really the most important factor? like I understand that HID's etc. are better able to penetrate the canopy, but is this due to some magically property of those types of bulbs? or... as i suspect, is it due to the difference in light wavelengths and lumens?

for instance, it seems like i could add a bunch more CFL's (which i just did). I mean, my room and my wallet aren't currently able to invest in all the additional equipment i would need if i jumped to HID's

thank you very much for the feedback. This is my first grow and I try to keep reminding myself that it was designed to teach myself how to grow, not necessarily to have mega trees

Click to expand...

Well sort of.. A lumen measures intensity of light. but plants are susceptible to different spectrum not intensities. For instance if you have a 1000w green spectrum light outputting 150,000 lumens, and compare it to a blue spectrum 400w Metal Halide outputting 42,000 lumens. The MH would actually have more readily usable light for the plant than because of the color spectrum. Cfl's and shop lights are made to let humans view them as efficiently as possible. Because of this they are tailored with more of a "yellow" or "green" spectrum because the human eye sees the color green as prominent. A plant likes the color "red" most although its recommended to use a "blue" spectrum for vegging.