I do really appreciate the information.
Remember that my opinion... is just one man's opinion.
If I had money to burn, I'd probably purchase several different LED panels. There are decent items out there. But, for me, it's just not worth the money at this time.
But need to keep clones alive long enough for me to flower what is growing.
If you just need to keep clones
alive, it doesn't take much of any kind of light (assuming that type can actually be used to grow cannabis). You can pretty much turn them into houseplants, lol, as long as you ensure enough hours of light (or, more properly stated, make sure there are less than the required hours of uninterrupted darkness) to prevent flowering. Bend (or top, I suppose, if you like doing that) the tops down so they try to bush instead of trying to grow to the sky, and they really do not
require much of anything. You don't even need to have the lights on all the way through the "non-dark" period; just make sure that the light comes on for an hour (shouldn't take that long, but...) at some point so that they don't receive enough hours of darkness in a row to initiate flowering. You could keep them in your flowering room -
if you can guarantee you'll be able to pull them out every "night" and stick them under
some kind of light for a few hours.
I was thinking led because I thought they would be cooler in a tent.
Again, they would be IF you're going to something of lesser wattage. But it's a trade-off. And, as mentioned, this limits your ventilation setup options to venting the entire grow as one thing (which, admittedly, doesn't bother some people) unless you were to purchase one of the very few (and very expensive, IMHO) models that have duct flanges instead of internal fans and vent slots all over the case.
I've noticed that 315-watt CMH - ceramic metal halides, sometimes referred to as LEC because, hey, it looks like LED and there's money in that :icon_roll - have become a lot more popular recently. That's only ~1,075.095 BTU/hour worth of heat production. And a 250-watt HPS or MH ought to be able to feed a 400 watt flowering room and maybe a 600.
For that matter, you
can use some type of fluorescents. I don't recommend it as a first choice, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't use them if this was my only option. I have some now... I might end up starting a few seeds soon, and if so I
might use them for a bit.
I own my first hps light tho it's only 150w but that's what my budget allowed for now.
A lot of people have used 150-watt HPS. Here is one of them:
150W HPS - 18 pics - 9 weeks flower
The main thing to keep in mind is that a small HID cannot penetrate into a canopy nearly as well as a large one. A small scrog grow might be appropriate, if that method fits with your style. Otherwise, try to avoid plants of significantly different heights, or try to keep the taller ones bent down with the shorter ones so that you don't need to keep your light too far from the shorter ones' tops. And you might have better luck growing one plant (vegging it a little longer). Or even placing a bunch of clones into 2-liter bottles, hempy style, however many will fit under the three (or less) square feet your light is probably capable of lighting well, and growing lollipop "buds on sticks" by placing them into flower as soon as they root or within a few days of that time. They'll be short and, if they're clones from the same mother, their heights will be even. But you can pack a lot of them under even a small light.
everybody has their own way guess it's up to the environment you're in.
Yes, and most of them generally work.
if I was in tx heat I'd prob run led.
I would probably just run, lol. But heat makes me feel puny.
