ok outa boredom and waaay to much free time i did alil playing with lights and this is what i found out.
first off all the plants are clones cut from the same mother at the same time. they are white widow. they are all in bubblers that are exactly the same (ph,PPM,water temp, water level) everything other than the lights are exactly the same. thats a point im trying to make really clear here, cuz thats the reason for this whole post.
im growing 3 different crops in 3 different rooms. all the rooms are 4'x4'x8'(LxWxH). they are all made from panda plastic and the temps are controlled to 78 +/- 2. each room has 1, 20 gallon bubbler with 3 plants in each tub. the plants are in 5" netpots with 2" rockwool and hydroton. im useing GH 3 part with super thrive and cal/mag for nutes. i used olivia's rooting gel to start the clones, and started them all in the bubblers they are in now on 18/6 lighting.
ok now for the good stuff, in room 1 i used a 1000watt hps hortilux eye with a cool tube and bat wing reflector. room 2 had 6, 13watt CFLs with drop light reflectors. and room 3 had 2, 4' floros in a plain ole shop reflector.
ROOM1 \1x1000watt HPS/
i started the light off about 3' above the plants and lowered it every few days until it was/is at 1' above them. the plants started slow at first. much slower than the other 2 rooms. but by the time the started to grow thier 2nd set of new leaves they started to grow pretty fast. but not up to par with the CFLs.
ROOM2 \6x13watt CFLs,,, 78total watts/
i started the plants in this room with the light about 1' above them and lowered it to within 2" by the end of week 1. the plants showed improvement within 2 days and by 4 days had thier 2nd set of new leaves. the plants in this room always looked better than thier sisters in the other 2 rooms. so much so that i was shocked. even better than the HPS.
ROOM3 \2x40watt 4' long tube floros,,,, 80 total watts/
in room 3 i started the lights off about 1' over the plants, and moved it down to within 2" by the end of week 1. these plants grew noticilbly slower and skinnier than the other 2 rooms. by the end of week 1 they had hardly changed at all. by far the worst of all 3 rooms.
they are now at week 5 almost and will go into flowering in a day or two. i let them get on the big side, but i ment to so that see just how much could be grown with each kind of light. the CFLs still look far better than the other 2 rooms with the HPS not far behind. the plants in room 2 (CFL room) are bushier and have almost 2x as many nodes as room 1 (HPS room). and the plants in room 3(4' floros) are just plain sad looking.
im sure things will swing to favor the HPS room when i go to 12/12, but enough to offset the cost is what this is all about.ill keep this updated as much as i can and let yall know what i yeild off each light, and toss up some pics now and again. i have to take the plants out of thier rooms to take pics so there wont be alot, but enough that youll see the what each light is doing. hope this helps to clear the air on what is worth growing with and what works best at what stage of growth,,,, for me.
and dont go bustin my e-nadds about spelling or stuff like that,,, im buzzin like a crop duster most the time im on this site,,,,, or awake.

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fdd2blk she said she wanted 12 inches, so i gave her 4 three times.
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plants from room 1(hps) @ 5 weeks

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fdd2blk she said she wanted 12 inches, so i gave her 4 three times.
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room 2 CFLs @ 5 weeks

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fdd2blk she said she wanted 12 inches, so i gave her 4 three times.
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room3 4' floros @ 5 weeks

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fdd2blk she said she wanted 12 inches, so i gave her 4 three times.
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i put the gel in the pics to give some scale.

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fdd2blk she said she wanted 12 inches, so i gave her 4 three times.
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Wow. Very interesting post. I read where CFLs are fine during veg but the real difference and advantage of the HPS is during the flowering phase. Thanks for the info and keep us posted.

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I grow only tomatoes and for my personal use. Any inference otherwise from my posts is completely false.

Current grow: http://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal...rly-misty.html

My 1st grow: http://www.rollitup.org/newbie-centr...h-me-luck.html

Yeah dude, I think that was a cool experiment too, you can see the plants growth degrade as you go thru the pics. There is so much to learn about lighting. Thanks!

it blew me away that the lil CFLs are doing so much better than the HPS so far. yeah im sure the the HPS will soon show up those CFLs in the flowering stage, but i never wouldve guessed that 78watts would out veg 1000watts. as for the long tube floros,,,, i vegged with them last year on my first indoor crop, and i will never use them again unless i need a huge paper wieght lol

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fdd2blk she said she wanted 12 inches, so i gave her 4 three times.
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Would have been interesting if you had a 1000 watt MH to add into the experiment.

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Experiments...this is how we learn. Very cool. Thanks!