possible t8 grow?

so my friends parents are throwing away 6 4ft 4 light t8 fixtures, and they said i could have them. i want to take at least 2 of them. its going to be a closet grow and i want to scrog, one for over the tops of the plants and one mounted on the back of the wall for a total of 8 bulbs. I know t8s arent the best for growing but these are like $40 fixtures and they were free. and i bet they would work decently for a 2 plant scrog what do you think?

awesome im wanting to do a 2 plant scrog just with regular bagseed that i have. just to get the feel for it.

ive had one attempted grow but they turned out to be male.

It will work for sure. I've done it. In fact I'm doing a t5 grow with t8 supplemental lighting because I've got it to use. It's looking great.

Take all the fixtures ... You will use em all ... Buy a T8 led tube @ home depot and make sure it works on that ballast.. If so... Toss those fluorescent tubes in the garbage and go all T8 LED tubes.

Corso312 said:

Take all the fixtures ... You will use em all ... Buy a T8 led tube @ home depot and make sure it works on that ballast.. If so... Toss those fluorescent tubes in the garbage and go all T8 LED tubes.

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Just looked into these for a t12.. Says a t12 puts out ~ 2,500 lumens and the led only puts out 1700 lumens.. Seems like a loss to me? Also they are only available in 2700k where the bulbs have a wide variety to choose from.. Thoughts?

Same thing with the T8, the philips LED T8 produce far less lumen than my regular philips T8. However, lumen alone doesn't mean much unless everything else is equal. It's merely a led strip... which makes it a lot more directional than a regular T8.



The 2 foot version for example has a beam angle of 160 degrees. Big difference, even more compared with fixtures that have no or poor reflection. So while it produces less light, your plants won't necessarily get less, roughly the same, more likely even more useful light, but in any case at far lower wattage, and they, opposed to regular T8 tubes, last much longer.

Wouldn't use them for flowering though. Not saying it's not doable, especially if you put many together, but they are great for vegging seedlings (the regular and led version that is) and small plants, keeping mother plants/clones etc.

I swapped out 2 and its absolutely brighter.. How many wasted lumens are going up or to the side on the crappy reflector with the flouros? Its gotta be more lumens per watt on the Led tube, and they project downward only.. Where ya want em . ... You sure you didn't see any 5000k ? Mine are 5000k and lit up my veg room much more than the flouros. The plants love it BTW .

The 5000k looks brighter because of the color. Slightly more lumens per watt yes, but far less per tube (roughly 40%). Anyway, seems like either your reading comprehension sucks or your reply was to indagrow cause we actually agree...

My reply was to indagrow ... The Phillips is 5000k and is 40 watts @ 2500 lumens.

The LED is 18 watts and 1700 lumens.

My regular T8 (2 feet) is 1350lumens, the led 800lumens, so same difference (40%). I'm going from 3x18w to 4x10w, from 4400lumen to 3200, but I'm pretty sure I get more "lumens" on the plants with the leds so it'll be a small upgrade despite the total decrease in lumens. The regular ones also drop 5% in lumens in the first several months/grows so the difference is less than it seems in many ways and lumens alone is rather meaningless unless you're comparing very similar lights.