5-6oz per plant or total? I checked out your current setup pulling pounds, it's pretty awesome! Is it all for personal use? I wish I had the space where I could do that. For this grow I may end up going the horizontal route until I get a bigger spot to grow in. I'll probably go with one of the hps + cooltube kits that don't have the ballast built in so I can always swap to vertical later.
Your friends must love coming to visit you haha!LOL! No, total. Anyone who can pull 30-36oz from a 250w is God!
Yes, get a remote ballast, as this will keep the heat down in the grow chamber. With a HPS ballast, you can also run a metal halide retro bulb during veg and HPS during flower. Some ballasts allow you to switch between the two (MH/HPS), so are handy.
Alternatively, see if you can get a 250w ceramic metal halide with matching HPS ballast, as this will offer the best of both worlds (good mix of red and blue spectrums for alround growing).
And do I grow for personal? Sure do. Obviously I have a bit left over - which only goes to my circle of friends - but I primarily grow for myself. That means I'm not growing for yield, but variety. If I monocropped for yield, I'd get a bit more. But usually I have four or five different strains going at any one time. I also do lots of different seed runs for clone mothers, which don't always yield well.
Once you get right into growing, you'll find variety is the spice of life!
Quite honestly,,, you'd do better with vertical CFLs in there. Drop a 50 ish watter down the middle and surround with 4 droppers in the 25 watt range. You'll be smiling and cool!
Yes, everyone loves coming to my place. I make great coffee, too
As I recall the same principle applies to both. ... Start with good beans
Yes, everyone loves coming to my place. I make great coffee, too
I don't run CMH bulbs (they don't make them bigger than 400w at the moment), so I'm not talking from experience. But from what I've researched, most will run on a HPS ballast (you will need to double check before purchasing, obviously) and can be beneficial for both vegging and flowering, as they produce a wider spectrum of PAR (photosynthetically active radiation - light is radiation) which the plant can use.
The old style of thinking was MH in veg - when the plant needs more blue/green spectrum - and HPS in flower - when it needs more red/orange. Think about nature: in late spring/summer the sun is higher and the sky is bluer. In late autumn/winter, the sun is lower and sky is redder. That's how most flowering plants have evolved.
But plants still need all the colours of the rainbow to grow efficiently - just in different ratios at different times.
And that's why growers started adding metal halide lights to their HPS grows at a usual ratio of 2HPS to 1MH to add more blue/green spectrum. Ceramic metal halide bulbs are supposedly the best of both worlds.
I say "supposedly" because I only form concrete opinions when I try something myself! So I would love to hear from those who are doing it themselves and hear their opinions. But again, from what I've read, they do seem to be more beneficial during flowering. Certainly I have not read many reports of people being disappointed with them. I would try CMH bulbs in a heartbeat if they made them in 600w.
Close, 3w x 3h x 2d. The only thing I'd add is even with mass ventilation you can still only let the plants get about 6 or 8 inches from the 400w globe Or it just bleaches all fuck out of what should be your best buds.
Nice! Do you have any pictures or a thread up on your setup? You haven't considered using CMH?
I still haven't bought one but I think these would work? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=hps socket&sprefix=hps+so,aps&rh=i:aps,k:hps socket
Ya I'd love to see some pics.
That's exactly what I got except cheaper, http://www.ebay.com/itm/iPower-250w-250-watt-HPS-MH-Grow-Light-System-Set-Kit-cheaper-than-400w-400-watt-/160660676488?var=&hash=item25681f5f88. Here is the setup I've got going.
