Although I've tried growing before, this will be my first time doing so with the proper equipment. I am planning on buying a grow tent, a 400 watt MH light with interchangable HPS bulb, AK-48 seeds from Nirvana, and the proper nutrients with a flood and drain hydroponics system. The grow tent will be in a big closet with fans running through each side of the tent for circulation. Do the veterans think this setup is sufficient? And am i right to say that i can grow three plants under the 400 watts?

Hi mate,

I grow in a tent and you will be fine growing 3 plants under 400w lamps.
you need to use some light that is not that strong in the first stage of the
grow though. get a few cfl's till the seedlings are ready to be vegged.
you may also want to try and vent the hot air right out of the closet as well as the tent and try
to get fresh cool air into the grow tent.
those 400w lamps can pump out some heat! you will find that your inlet fan just starts to circulate
warm air back into the tent from the closet. that wont be good for temp control.

whats the dimentions of your grow tent and the closet?

Thanks for your response. Why get cfl's though? Do you think a metal halide light would be too powerful? I thiought I could just adjust the distance away from the plant

CFL's run very cool, so cool you could even touch a 100 watt bulb and not get burned. MH runs even hotter than HPS and they can easily reach over 300 degrees at the bulb so I think that would be to much heat for such a little space. I have (4) 100w and (2) 60w cfl's in the veg room and they work great. All my plants reached over 30" in less than two months. Just keep the cfl's close to the plants because they are not very powerful. Dont worry they wont burn the plants because they cant get that hot.

Thanks So much. This is definitely sound advice. How many watts of CFL should I buy for 3 plants? And can I usee CFL's for flowering?

Cfls are great for growing from start to finish but if you can get a decent ventilation system set up
then your 400w lamps would work very well for your plants.
I wouldnt use them for the early stages as 1- they get very hot as bigbudmike as mentioned and also
your plants dont want so much light in the early seedling stage so you will also be 2- wasting electricity
running your high powered lights when there not yet needed.
use cfls until you get development of the first 4 leaves and then start introducing the stronger light.
but if you cant set up some good ventilation you may want to use cfls through the whole grow and maybe
if the temps are not to high, use the HPS for flowering but bear in mind the plants prefer a lower temp in flowering
then in growth.

hope this helps mate

Im on my first grow at the moment but have learned so much in the last 2 weeks