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ChEEzyStEEzy said:
Alright so ive been growing for a month over a month now and the lady at the grow store recommended I have my plants veg under a 120 watt LED light so i did and it seems like they havent grown as much as they should. I also have a 400 watt HPS light the lady at the grow store told me to use for flower. My question is if I move my plants under the 400 watt and still keep it 23 hours on would they grow alot better? was the 120 watt a waste of money?

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ChEEzyStEEzy said:
Alright so ive been growing for a month over a month now and the lady at the grow store recommended I have my plants veg under a 120 watt LED light so i did and it seems like they havent grown as much as they should. I also have a 400 watt HPS light the lady at the grow store told me to use for flower. My question is if I move my plants under the 400 watt and still keep it 23 hours on would they grow alot better? was the 120 watt a waste of money?

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whats up cheezy.

Have you researched the brand of led you purchased? You very well could have wasted your money, but hey there's a chance that the store owner did right by ya. I know next to nothing about led's, but what i do know is that they have a MUCH smaller footprint than hid lamps. This could be your problem.

I would suggest heavily researching the led you purchased and then Give this Article a read.

As for switching to veg under the hps. Hell yes.Go for it. If you're not getting results now you'll definitely see a surge in growth under the hid. I personally veg w/ an 18/6 cycle. You will do just fine continue ing on the 23hr cycle. Is there any particular reason you chose to have the lights 23hrs on 1hr off?

And.....Welcome to the Growery!!  Stick around

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hamloaf said:

The HID light will be more intense than that LED, but in the wrong spectrum for vegetative growth.  Putting your plant under that HPS to veg will cause growth to elongate or stretch.

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hamloaf said:

Is your HID a switchable ballast?  I'd take that LED back and exchange it for a Metal Halide bulb if that ballast you bought is/was switchable and veg em' under a Halide as my first choice.  If your ballast isn't switchable though I'd exchange that LED for a T5 set up with mostly cool blue bulbs in the 6500K range and two bulbs in the 2700K range for veg.

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If the ballast isn't switchable he can just use a conversion bulb.

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I've veg'd several grows under HPS lamps and have NEVER experienced this.  If the ballast isn't switchable he can just use a conversion bulb.

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hamloaf said:

My hydrostore guy tried to explain it to me but I found him boring so I quit paying attention to his explanation.

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hamloaf said:
Yea, fuck him.  He talks real loud and doesn't listen to what you got to say so he can fuck right off.

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hamloaf said:

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I've veg'd several grows under HPS lamps and have NEVER experienced this.  If the ballast isn't switchable he can just use a conversion bulb.

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Very well then.  I'm not very familiar with these conversion bulbs yet.  My hydrostore guy tried to explain it to me but I found him boring so I quit paying attention to his explanation.  On plants from seed in veg I use a 16/8 photoperiod.

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I have also heard that HPS works just fine for veg. I personally prefer the nice and tight internodal spacing the MH produces... my T-5 is giving me some pretty stringy clones...

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I personally prefer the nice and tight internodal spacing the MH produces

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hamloaf said:

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I personally prefer the nice and tight internodal spacing the MH produces

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Me too.  Yea, I've never heard of vegging under an HPS before until now.  Heard lots of good things about flowering under a Metal Halide though.  Honestly I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.  I am just going by what I know, and I'll be the first to tell you that I know far from everything, but you learn something new everyday. 

Why do you think your T-5's are giving you stringy clones?  T-5's don't give off very intense light, and their light intensity begins to diminish greatly just 4-5 inches from the bulbs.  That's why I only use T-5's or CFLs for veg keeping my plants 3-4 inches tall with low stress training.  I keep the lights cool by keeping on a few fans (1 box style fan to create airflow underneath the raised pots and an oscillating fan blowing on the plants) and am able to keep the lights cool enough that I grow the plants straight up into the bulbs so that the plants are touching the bulbs and the leaves never burn.  This allows me to utilize these types of lights in a way that I get most to all of the intense light that these bulbs have to offer.  Don't like T-5's and florescents for flowering though because the plants have to grow tall to form buds.  I prefer the HPS for flowering because you still have a lot of intense light far from the light source so that more intense light can penetrate down into the bottom of the garden and you can get better buds down there.

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Well, it's the 4' 4-bulb T-5 my partner picked up for $50. I'm only using it because the girls we picked up were not grown the way I like my girls to be. They were like 16-18 inches tall, with not much for side branches. I got em home and tried to put em under the thouie, but it kept popping the breaker. So the only other light I had besides the T-5 was a 95-watt flouro (got it at a yard sale with a bunch of other stuff for $20). So I bent em at a 90 degree angle, and put the T-5 above it (about 5-6 inches). Now they've been there a week, and its just not giving me results I'm happy with. They maybe I'm being a bit premature with my assessment, but eh Once the room in the basement is finished, this T-5 only going to be used for rooting clones. I think I'll even run my moms under a thouie... lol

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Midgetpawn said:
If you have a ballast and 88$ to spend get a 400w MH Eye hortilux blue daylight spectrum bulb IMO. Has to be the best bulb in existence for veg and flowering. Although I'm just basing that on the spectrum of light it covers. Metal halide not high pressure sodium.

There are also lights called ceramic metal halide that might actually be even better than the eye blue. I don't know anything about those though.

I don't understand LED grow lights. you could buy over a million little LED lights for the cost of some of those grow light systems. It has to be extremely profitable to be an LED grow light inventor atm.

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