HPS and MH light, I hope I made finally made the right call

[Twilly]

Just throwing this out again, But check out Craigslist for used MH high bay HID lighting.... I got 2 for $50... Still going strong and if you want hps you can get a conversion bulb

[hydrophotobio]

I'm willing to bet the 240w isn't a 240w at all. You might have 240w worth of diodes but not in power drivers.

[CAPT38]

Hey cable,
If you are looking for low cost lightning lowes sells a 85 watt cfl that's equivalent to a 300 watt incandescent for around. 16 bucks, I bought two of them with two brooding lights in all I spent 60 bucks, I was using 25 watt cfls ( my plant growth seemed to slow at the 6th week)
After I set up the new cfls, my plants growth exploded, but the do get some natural sun light throughout the day. I have transfered all my tomato and pepper plants outside into a wicking system and started new seedlings inside, I haven't seen how their doing under the larger cfls. ( @ work ) , but the wife says they are growing pretty good........from what ive read you are going to need a mh and hps one. For veg one for flowering...but don't take my word on that, ( my toms flowered under the cfls I didn't get alot of flowers but my grow room has a window and the plants get some sun light. As far as I am concerned the 300 watt cfls work very well and are a low cost alternative to to mh hps and led and tube fluorescent fixtures. ( I'm not saying that they work better just cheaper over all ) as a beginner in hydroponics I have had very good success with my home built system, admittedly I was somewhat skeptical about hydroponics in the beginning.

[cable24601]

I just got my new grow lights in the mail yesterday and so far I think I made the right choice. I got a 600 watt digital ballast, fixture, high pressure sodium and metal halide bulb on ebay for $200. After putting this thing together I notice right away that amount of light was far greater than what I had with the LED system. I also noted that the coverage area was about 5 times grater than before. I had to install some ducting to help with cooling as the light was much hotter than what I had in the past and after moving the air pump to the outside of the tent I am only 1 degree hotter then before. The move to the new lighting has given me the option to really start expanding with more plants so I know that I will be busy in the next few weeks adding more hydroponics systems to the grow tent and may even finally see some tomatoes.

[ProZachJ]

You have to buy a pretty expensive LED to be able to match the intensity and coverage of a 400W HID...they are out there, but not on ebay or other cheap sources.

[WeeGogs]

Originally Posted by cable24601

I just got my new grow lights in the mail yesterday and so far I think I made the right choice. I got a 600 watt digital ballast, fixture, high pressure sodium and metal halide bulb on ebay for $200. After putting this thing together I notice right away that amount of light was far greater than what I had with the LED system. I also noted that the coverage area was about 5 times grater than before. I had to install some ducting to help with cooling as the light was much hotter than what I had in the past and after moving the air pump to the outside of the tent I am only 1 degree hotter then before. The move to the new lighting has given me the option to really start expanding with more plants so I know that I will be busy in the next few weeks adding more hydroponics systems to the grow tent and may even finally see some tomatoes.

i dont want to butt in but i dont understand, why would you use metal halide and hps lamps at the same time. when you can buy a dual spectrum 600w or1000w lamp.
you can also buy them with cool tubes or units that have ducting flanges on to vent the heat away with an extraction fan from the lamp itself, instead of the room.
i have never liked metal halide, the spectrum is the very top of the vegetation scale, it will cause very tall and thin tomato plants etc, the hps is at the very top of the flowering scale. it is like changing seasons, use the metal halide to grow the plant, and once you want to bear fruit swap it with the hps, you have tricked your plant in to thinking that the season or time is right to bear fruit. led lights are a waste of time, to copy our sun you need very strong light with lots of power behind it.

[hydrophotobio]

"led lights are a waste of time"

Oh, really? I think these plants in my home garden would beg to differ.

April 30th vs May 11 - 11 days of growth.

Beating summer sun production rates, ahead by two weeks on this dill and Parris Island Romaine.

[GpsFrontier]

Although I don't have any doubts that LED's can grow healthy plants (that is when your using good quality LED panels). But good quality LED's are not cheep, and only have an effective distance of about 18 inches. So unless you only want to grow a few lettuce plants, LED's just aren't cost effective yet.

[cable24601]

Originally Posted by WeeGogs

i dont want to butt in but i dont understand, why would you use metal halide and hps lamps at the same time. when you can buy a dual spectrum 600w or1000w lamp.
you can also buy them with cool tubes or units that have ducting flanges on to vent the heat away with an extraction fan from the lamp itself, instead of the room.
i have never liked metal halide, the spectrum is the very top of the vegetation scale, it will cause very tall and thin tomato plants etc, the hps is at the very top of the flowering scale. it is like changing seasons, use the metal halide to grow the plant, and once you want to bear fruit swap it with the hps, you have tricked your plant in to thinking that the season or time is right to bear fruit. led lights are a waste of time, to copy our sun you need very strong light with lots of power behind it.

I am not using the MH and HPS at the same time. I have one fixture and two bulbs one MH and one HPS. The idea is that I would start with MH until I am about to hit the flowering stage and then I would run HPS for the rest.

[GpsFrontier]

I can pop 2,000 umol (sunlight intensity) near 10 inches. The low range of high light levels begins around 150 umol. With umol count halving with each doubling of the distance, 250 umol is therefore 80 inches away.

First, I and most people are interested in growing plants larger than 10 inches. As well as a wide varieties of plants, not just low light requirement plants like lettuce. Second, for the sake of argument (because once again there is no research data to support your numbers, the equipment, and costs), but if one simply has plenty of money they can get a lot of light output from LED's, and even florescent. If I wanted to I could get good plant growth from florescent lighting, and from 8 feet away. I just need to use enough of them and place them at different angles. I could even use double ballasts and overdrive the florescent lighting. But between the cost of equipment and electricity (total wattage), it simply wouldn't be cost effective compared to MH and/or HPS. That's the most important part, and the part you always choose to ignore.