400 watt multi vapor

The company I work for asked me to get rid of the old lighting fixtures for our shop because they had new ones installed. They are 400 watt multi vapor. Are they mercury vapor or are they metal halide's? I know mercury vapor are basically useless, but if they are metal halides they should still be better than my cfl's right?Also can i still get decent buds off mh? any input would be appreciated

Multi vapor means they'll take both mercury vapor and metal halide bulbs. By all means yes use them and yes you can get some great smoke flowering with halides they're less ideal than HPS but still plenty useable for flowering. Pick up some halide bulbs (5000k so they're closer to flowering spectrum) and have at it. Also pulse start metal halide bulbs are even better than HPS for flowering or vegging. Since your fixtures were free it wouldn't hurt to try one and see if it works. Probably will if they are magnetic which 99% odds are they will be.

Just check to see if the input voltage is what you need or if they are multi-tap ballasts so you can re-wire them to the right voltage if need be.

Lastly the only difference between a halide and hps ballast is one relatively inexpensive ignitor part. You can modify them to run HPS.

dahamma said:

The company I work for asked me to get rid of the old lighting fixtures for our shop because they had new ones installed. They are 400 watt multi vapor. Are they mercury vapor or are they metal halide's? I know mercury vapor are basically useless, but if they are metal halides they should still be better than my cfl's right?Also can i still get decent buds off mh? any input would be appreciated

Click to expand...

For years I grew under nothing but MH. THe grow on the link below was all MH start to finish. Now I use a dual bulb, but fuolorcent bulb are weak at best

thanx for the info guys. Im going to pick up some bulbs and give em a try.