t5 flourescent vs. hps

meatman

New Member
I have a sunleaves pioneer 8 t5 fixture. It is an 8 lamp fixture and each lamp put out 54 watts. I also have a 400w hps light. i have vegged my plants under the t5's for six weeks and induced flowering about 2 weeks ago. My girls have started to form pistils but i don't think that they are progressing as well as they should. What I am wondering is if i switch to the 400w hps will I get better bud production than with the t5 flourescent? The original reason I got the t5 fixture is the heat the hps puts out was too much for the summer months in my closet.
 
i am growing in a closet that is 5x6x8. i switched the lights on the 25th and am using the flourescent for side lighting. my girls are finally starting to produce flowers, after just 2 days under the hps. the temp goes up to around 85 degrees in the morning, but then i can bring it back down to around 75 as soon as i can get my cats away from the closet. (once i get them out of my bedroom i can open the closet door and let the cool air blow into the closet.)
 
Hps is a good idea if you can vent like dude said. Buy a bigger fan to help. What size are you using now? Your gonna need at least 240cfm. T-5's will make bud you just need about four more. Running all that still should be cheaper than using the HID light, if that is an issue. One crucial advantage of the HID is the color spectrum, but now you can buy flouresnt bulbs that create the red spectrum needed for fat nasty sticky buds.......gotta go.
 
I have a 16 inch oscilating fan blowing cool air into my room and a small fan suspended above the light to blow the hot air out. it is doing fine now, the temp in the closet stays right around 72 to 75 with the door open. i also have a "co2 boost" on my plants to see if that helps. i don't know if it will make all that much of a difference because this is my first grow.
 
like i said i have no standards to compare it with as this is the first time i got females. (my first grow turned up all males. talk about a kick in the balls.) but hey it is trial and error right. anyways here is what i got going on in my room. the plants are growing in "b'cuzz cocoa subatrate. i am feeding them advanced nutrients monkey juice and nothing else. i feed once a week upping the ppm each week until i get to 1100 ppm and then i will back down each week and flush the last to weeks with straight water. the plants are under a 400w hps and the tallest is 34 inches and the shortest is 28. i vegged them for 6 weeks under a 400w flourescent and started flowering july 12. after a week i had 9 of 16 females. i have no history on the strain as it is just some bagseed. good bagseed, but bagseed none the less. there are 6 doing really well and 3 that are so so. had a ph problem with my water considering they seem to like it around 6 or so i found that mixing spring water and distilled water puts my ph right around 6. i also found out that the ozone generator does wonders for the smell it burns the shit out of the plants. i made the mistake of putting it in the closet with my babies and they suffered. it is now in a different room. you live and learn. it is not like i can really go to a friggin garden club and learn about this, but hey i am optimistic about what is going on in my closet. ii noticed yesterday that the flowers were just coated with resin glands already. they are tiny but it almost makes my plants look fuzzy. giggidy giggidy goo!!!
 
even you're still using the coolwhite tubes for flowering then it's normal your plants don't budge a lot, you need to switch it out for color 830 or 827

I use 2 80w high output fluors for vegging and it's great, gonna get another for a lil "love box" for my breeding projects

for reference I get about 35000lux at up to 4-6 inches from the lamps

here's a pic of my fluors
 
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