Can't figure the flouros out.....

[Amon1011]

For the first 6 weeks of my veg i have been using 3 fixtures with 2 4ft lights each, the other day shopping i jus find out ive been using plant and aquarium lights to make it look nice with 1600 lumens(obviouly not enough). From what ive heard u should have 5000 lumens per sq ft. With my 3x4 room i should have about 60000 lumens but i only had about 10000(plants still look nice and healthy but are small for 7 weeks 10 plants from 8-14"). Also ive heard that in veg. stage a 6500k is good, but as i've been looking for flouros i cant find ne with a high Kelvin and a high lumens at the same time and only bulbs that have a high enough amount of lumens are the 8foots. At the home depot and lowes ive been going to have a high one or the other and it seems to fllip flop. Any input on what i should be using or wat i can do would be helpful, I also added a 4th fixture at this point totaling 8 bulbs.

 

[Mutt]

at some point its cheaper to go HID.
50W HID per square foot. you can find HPS's cheap now online.
My home of de "pot" has 50W HPS all the way up to 250W HPS floods

 

[Amon1011]

yeah im going to have two rooms an HID for flowering but im using flouro for vegging so if ne1 can answer my previous questions i would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Mutt]

5000Kelvin+ will be ok for for veg.
you can get 55W+ 5K kelvin pretty cheap at 1000bulbs.com
Compact CFL's they screw into a reg. socket. Try browsing around that site, they give lumen output and kelvin temp
they have tube flos too.

 

[Amon1011]

I curently have them under Ott-lite 40watt T12 "grow healthy plant indoor lights" but doesn't mention lumens or Kelvins.

 

[Mutt]

I curently have them under Ott-lite 40watt T12 "grow healthy plant indoor lights" but doesn't mention lumens or Kelvins.

there website don't give any specs either. Looking at there prices...I'd shop around
Try wal-mart they have good prices on there "cool" white tubes..they list temp and lumens
(I picked up 6500K 3K lumens for about 6 bucks a tube for 4'ers )

 

[Amon1011]

sites good but i still cant find a 5000k bulb with a lumen of 5000plus. All the bulbs with a high lumen is like 4100k would that make a difference?

 

[Amon1011]

Yeah at home depot they had cool white high output with 5000k and about 4500 lumens but were out of them and also at home depot i picked up the ights i have for 7's each so i dunno y it has them for 20 on the site.

 

[Dubbaman]

heres a skinny on my flo set up with 3 ballasts go to any home stor (eg home de "pot" :rofl: Mutt) look for the G.E. daylight 40W 4ft tubes they put out 3050 lumen per bulb at start up (i think the mean is like 3000 lumen) so after all its 6k lumen at i think its a 6500K bulb per ballast 3 ballasts is 18k lumen in the right color for you and i only keep them about 4 in off the plant tops and when it touches it time to raise it up your room of 3 x 4 is 12 sq ft 12x5000 is 60k lumen and you can get that easy with 2 4ft flos and a 400W HID or jsut one 600W but since you have the flos too (like me) why not use them and save a bit on the big pretty bulb

 

[Amon1011]

I just have 4 fixtures that can hold 2 bubls each so if i have 8 of those daylight bulbs ill be fine? Also at lowes they had lsited a cool white high output that was 4500 lumens at 5000k which seems perfect but they were out.

 

[Amon1011]

These ott-lites seem to be pretty good so far and give off the day-light spectrum which is listed on the flourescent bulb section on htgsupply.com so maybe these lights are pretty good for growing. I mean the box's of the bulbs say there for indoorplant growing so maybe there liget.