Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH) with a MH Ballast? Yes!!

Looks like Phillips finally got around to making a CMH that will work with a MH ballast.

Still has to be a magnetic ballast though.

Check it out! http://advancedtechlighting.com

Wet

Whats the point of this exactly less energy usage?

More to the point is the most excellent spectrum provided by CMH.

They weren't designed as grow bulbs, but to retrofit older systems. That they work so well for growing was a happy side benefit.

Wet

For some reason the graph says HPS-Retro White, but i assure you it's for a CMH bulb vs. HPS

also, let me know if you mind, but i though i would add some tech info from biology lesson to pimp out your thread



the kind of light(hps/mh/cfl/etc) doesnt matter. at effing all. what you should be concentrating on is the kelvin spectrum (sometimes given in nanometer wavelenghts readings) and the lumen out put. you should also consider the relative heat output from each bulb respectively.

if i may, let me back up my statements. this is definitive, there has been study after study after study regarding specific wavelengths of light that plants absorb. (keep in mind wavelength is the same as Kelvin rating). these "useful" wavelengths are different for every plant(plants in the tropics get more direct sun(less red light) than plants near the poles(more red, due to the angle of the sun's rays))
but anyways, there is a very intuitive reason for why plants use blue and red light.

if you look at the visible light spectrum from left to right, you should realize the colors roy. g. biv. red to the left, green in the middle, and blue to the right. unfortunately i dont have a chalkboard i can draw on to show you what the graph looks like on this forum. but if you can imagine a graph in which amount absorbed is the y axis and wavelength(color) is the x axis. you will see that plants take up a fair amount of the red spectrum, hardly any green, and a fair amount of blue spectrum. the reason why we see a leaf as green is due to the fact that green light is reflected, not absorbed, green light bounces back.

so that was pretty long winded and didnt have much to do with anything, but it is interesting, but is a necessary precursor for the following:

studies have shown that different wavelengths of absorbed light are indeed responsible for the expression of separate hormones, obviously, just like when you got your first pube, your hormone expression was changing and putting your body through the morphological changes associated with puberty. the same in plants. blue light is associated with the summer and IN marijuana

this is the important part to keep in mind, even in nature when cannabis is flowering, it is still absorbing blue light, most notably around noon(obviously), both spectrums are used during flowering, just like vegetating. the most notable difference between the effects of blue and red light is that, IN SEEDLINGS and IMMATURE plants, red light stimulate the plant to stretch, no matter how close the plant is to the source, red light is conducive to shade so the plant grows to get out of the shade. (thats just a neat side note)

what really gets a plant going in the flowering cycle, is not necessarily the type of light, but the cycle of the mysterious TOC protein/hormone oscillation. although many studies show that in mature plants, excessive red light, produces larger flowers mainly due to red light striking appropriate red light phototropins that release more of the "flowering" hormone(s)

many plants have different genetics that allows for blue light to stimulate flowering. in the fall, you may think of this as when you turned 10, the angle of the sun produces less blue light and a cooler, less energetic red light. the red light sets off a series of second messenger gene cascades( youll have to look that one up, its a whole other topic) that are responsible for proteins and hormones involved in flower formation.

Do they make cmh in anything bigger than 400 watt at this point?

Sooo basically this is an all in 1 light. Using parts of both lighting spectrum ...

no, its a more distinct reproduction of the light spectrum provided by the sun. the Blue side of the spectrum of the CMH bulbs is pretty much inline with current MH bulbs and floresants, cfls. but the Red spectrum (Bloom Spectrum ) is much more full of red, right up to infrared. HPS just cant match that wide spectrum of red, and MH can only match CMH for blues best i can tell.

only availalbe from 50w to 400w atm. 600s and 1000s are said to be coming (for the last few years from what i can gather.
i chose the Philips CMH 400w as it is a single light for everything. Cloneing, seeding, veg and bloom.

and the best part, bulb is 42.00 to 73 (MSRP is 72.99). i got mine for 55.00 basically 1/2 of a high quality MH or HPS light.

Yeah, I was re visiting the site checking out price increases for the 400wHPS rebuild kit and saw this new bulb.

The last time I visited, they only had the CMH bulb that worked in the HPS ballast.

Right now, I'm running both a 400wHPS and 400wMH and was going to use the MH enclosure for the HPS kit. They are both magnetic.

Now, all I need is the bulb. But, I am going to research it a bit further and still may go with the CMH for the HPS.

This bulb just apparently appeared in the last couple of months. It wasn't there when I visited last Oct or Nov.

Wet

OldGrowth420 said:

if you go to your local petco you can buy a bulb for every kelvin you can imagine.

emulating nature will most always be the best deal. you make a good point, where in the world does ANY organism receive that much time under the sun? no where.

as far as kelvins(or nm), the best way to do it, if money were no option, and if you could find ALL of the proper bulbs, i would try to find bulbs between 1800-3000, i would go with 5 of these, at 1000 lumen apiece. try to get one 1800, a 2000, a 2500, 2700, 3000. (you get the idea.) you really would see major benefit if you could get all of these spectrums together.
in addition to the lower end of the kelvins, you should also try to find 1000 lumen bulbs between 5000-8000, pick 5 bulbs at increments similar to the other ones i just gave as an example.

ideally you should be shooting for 10,000 to 15,000 total lumens from the mixed spectrum, excluding green light which is about 4000k.

on a super sunny summer day, the sun spits out between 10,000 and 25,000 lumens per sq ft depending on ozone, cloud coverage, smog, and a few others things.

more lumens, will make your plants produce more, just as long as the heat is kept in check.

so a recap, mix the spectrums as much as possible, exclude green light~3500k-4500k, shoot for 10,000 lumen or more, if you can. you will still get growth with less lumen, just ultra, ultra slow.

Click to expand...

For those who are reading this post to learn about lighting..... I would like to add that 10,000 lumens or more per square foot is not actually achievable taking into consideration of the inverse square law. You can use this number as a benchmark if you wish, but the actual lumens delivered to the plant are nowhere near this level taking into consideration the distance between the light and the plants. Basically the closer the plants, the greater the lumens. Contrarily the further the plants, the less the lumen intensity becomes. Assuming that this is possible insinuates that the sun can be duplicated inside a room in my basement. It can be simulated, but not duplicated.

Not trying to correct you OldGrowth420, I know exactly what you are trying to say. But given the level of depth you are explaining things, I think it is only fair to add my notes for someone who happens to find this thread while researching lighting.

Now lets see some pics of those CMH bulbs in action!

I have a question. I have a small set up in the works and I want to split it into 2 chambers, 1 grow, 1 flower. Can I buy 2 of the 250w and 2 ballasts (considering they are half price, it'd be like buying one) and put one in each for growing and flowering purposes and have it work? Since the spectrum is so wide?

Timmahh said:

no, its a more distinct reproduction of the light spectrum provided by the sun. the Blue side of the spectrum of the CMH bulbs is pretty much inline with current MH bulbs and floresants, cfls. but the Red spectrum (Bloom Spectrum ) is much more full of red, right up to infrared. HPS just cant match that wide spectrum of red, and MH can only match CMH for blues best i can tell.

only availalbe from 50w to 400w atm. 600s and 1000s are said to be coming (for the last few years from what i can gather.
i chose the Philips CMH 400w as it is a single light for everything. Cloneing, seeding, veg and bloom.

and the best part, bulb is 42.00 to 73 (MSRP is 72.99). i got mine for 55.00 basically 1/2 of a high quality MH or HPS light.

Click to expand...

Now, all I need is the bulb. But, I am going to research it a bit further and still may go with the CMH for the HPS.

This bulb just apparently appeared in the last couple of months. It wasn't there when I visited last Oct or Nov.



________________
link magnets

Nowski101 said:

I have a question. I have a small set up in the works and I want to split it into 2 chambers, 1 grow, 1 flower. Can I buy 2 of the 250w and 2 ballasts (considering they are half price, it'd be like buying one) and put one in each for growing and flowering purposes and have it work? Since the spectrum is so wide?

Click to expand...

Yes this bulb will work universally for both vegetation and flowering.

Has anyone bought a cmh for the metal halide ballast yet? Im going to be ordering one soon