id check ebay for the hps mate, i got mine really cheap off their, brand new in the box, it was from a flee bay shop on their, it was £65 including delivery and i got the 400watt dual spectrum hps with digital ballast, which means that i can also buy a metal halide bulb and run that in the same ballast as the hps, you cant how ever use hps bulbs in a mh ballast, but if you get a digital hps ballast then these will also power mh bulbs of the same wattage, hps bulbs are more suited to flower but like mh bulbs you can use them for both stages of growth, how ever hps is the better option is its more suited for flowering so would produce better results than the mh bulb.
but now you can buy dual spectrum hps bulbs it means you dont need to use mh for the veg stage, you can just use the hps for both stages of growth, it dont give off the exact same blue light as mh bulbs do but it gives off enough to make the plants grow quick and healthy during veg, so thats what im now using, i use it for both veg and flower, cost me 65 quid and works perfect, i get lots more lumins with the hps than i did with the cfls, the temps do go through the roof though, i could keep my grow room door closed when i was using 15 x 30watt cfls but with this 1 x 400 watt dual spec hps i cant leave the door totally closed else the plants would cook, but having the door open is not a problem,
i use cfls in my smaller grow cupboard, i found using cfls the plants didnt want to get very tall, i was going to flower my first grow off when the plants reached 1ft tall, but after 7 weeks they was still not that tall so i switched to flower as they was very bushy, but now i use only 3 x 23 watt 6500 k cfls in my small clone and seedling cupboard and the plants seem to grow better and taller with less lights so not exactly sure why, but when my hps is on i take the plants out of the small grow cupboard and put them under the hps then when the hps goes off i take them out and put them back under cfls.
you would get a better deal off the auction site than the hydro shop, so id look their first, only buy something thats new and in the box as you dont want an old ballast or bulb, go for a digital ballast as well then you have the option of using mh bulbs as well if you wanted to give them a boost during veg, you could just take the hps bulb out and put the mh in.
i grow 6 plants at a time so 400 watts is what i need, for 2 plants you would be ok with 150watts plus you could always supliment tall plants with some side lighting which is what i do when i have a taller plant.
for your height problem what you could of done is some low stress training, its probably to late now as the stem might be to hard but basically what you do is train the plant to grow sideways and not upwards, this gives you an even canopy and many top bud sites, 20+ at least, when i was using cfls this is what i did, im also doing this with the plant that has got 2 stems, i trained both stems to grow to the opposite edge of the pot then let it grow up, so now i have got 2 main stems growing upwards at either edge of the pot but where i trained it i have got loads of shoots growing upwards towards the light, so it looks like i got a long plant in the pot instead of one thats growing upwards, what this does is then give you many main bud sites as you are growing the stem sideways keeping the stem at the same level, this then makes all the growth at the nodes grow upwards at the same rate, so you dont just have the main stem at the top of the plant, instead you have 20 or 30 main stems all growing up towards the light, so instead of having a 2ft plant you might only have a plant 8 inches high but will have many main bud sites.
low stress training.
i went to the rain forest sounding sale site not the auction one and purchased a pack of 30cm pipe cleaners, then when my plant started growing from seed i transplanted it into the bigger pot i was going to finish it in, then i poked holes all the way around the pot, then i poked the pipe cleaner through the hole and hooked it round the top of the plant, i then pulled the plant down so it was running sideways, it may take a few days to get the stem running horizontel due to it wanting to grow up so be careful not to pull it down to much to start off with as you can break the stem, so keep pulling it down a bit each day, when its running sideways you will notice how quick the shoots grow at the nodes, these then become the top of the plant so these grow upwards like crazy, you then need to keep moving the pipe cleaners around the pot as the stem grows because every few days the stem will grow enough to start growing upwards so you just move the pipe cleaner to the next hole and pull it back down, then keep doing this till your happy with the plant then flip it to flower.
continue with the lst while it starts to flower and then after a couple of weeks stop with the lst and let the plant grow upwards so the buds can get bigger, then the plant wont be tall when finished but will have many main buds giving you a decent return.
if you have a look on my journal you will see my 2 stem plant, it was a clone i took and somehow it grew 2 stems so i used pipe cleaners to train each stem to opposite sides of the pot, so if you look on my journal you will see what i mean about lst and how it works and the results you get, a lot of people do this when height is an issue as you can train the main stem to grow sideways instead of upwards, then when all the other branches are growing upwards you can pull them down as well, it will give you great results and wont take up much height, its worth looking into,.
