48" shop light fluorescent
 

hey im new to this in my little grow room and i mean little, i have my plants under a 48" shop light fluorescent with 2 fluorescent lights on them, one is a plant/aquarium light the other is a sun simulator full spectrum, they seem to be growing well with them however my question is if i leave the lights on 24 hours a day, with this speed up there growth or kill them, i thought a plant was like a system, give it twice the light twice the water twice the food and twice the work that they would get fully grown in half the time. or am i just a plant murderer...

Even if you leave those shop lights on longer than 24/ 7 you can't grow much more than starter plants. Fluorescents are only useful for the first two weeks of plant life.

Ron please explain. Are you talking all fluorescents or just "shop light tubes"? If you have the 6500K spectrum tubes for growing and 3000K tubes for flowering and enough to give you plenty of light then why wouldn't they work longer?

Ron was the owner of the website but he sold it, he hasent posted in this forum in about a year.

For what its worth our local Home Depot now sells T5 lights, I saw a 3 tube 48" for just over 30 bucks if I remember right. Way better than the T12's I think the original poster was talking about.

To answer your original question, no, it is not good to run your lights 24 hours a day. All plants need a period of R&R, and most also require a cooldown. It is preferable to have a 10 degree drop in temp during the nite/lights off period.

During vegetative stage: lites on 16-19 hours per day.

During flowering/fruiting: lites on 12-14 hours per day.

Hope this helps!

I've never seen a issue vegging 24/7 un tell your at a mature size to fruit. Let us not forget some of the largest crops come out of Alaska becuse its almost 24 hr lights for the grow season.