Fluorescent Tubes

Im starting to collect some parts to setup my first indoor grow room and i have a couple of questions regarding lighting.

I was wondering if its possible to use Fluorescent Tubes instead of CFL globes. Essentially they are the same thing arnt they??

Now iv been doing a bit of reading and everyone seems to say to use 6500k or 5000k tubes for vegetation and 2700k or 3000k for flowering.

I only want 2 plants so i was thinking would 3 2ft 6500k work for vegetation and then another 3 2700k's for flowering? does that sound about right??

this is how i was thinking of setting out the lights so that they managed to hit as much of the plant as possible.


now my next question is how hard is it to get the correct tubes? i didnt think it would be to hard seeing as alot of aquarium lights are designed for growing plants and therefor should be about right colour/brightness.

anyway if anyone has done it this way before and has been succesful or even failed id love to hear what you think.

This next go around I'm surrounding my plants in floros:



Just keep in mind that tubes don't throw very far - shorter distance than CFLs so keep them VERY close to the plants. You can purchase the correct spectrums at most hardware stores and they should be a bit cheaper than an aquarium shop.

wow looks like you have alot more than i planned on using!! do you think 3 will be enough?

Depends on what you were planning on using. 3x 4 bulb HO T5 pannels would be enough for a small grow. If you were thinking of 3 single 2' tubes I don't think that will be enough. I would go with 3x 23x CFLs over 3x 24" 25w tubes just because you can get the bulbs closer together to maximize lumens in a single area. Even then you will want more towards the end.

All of those tubes in my picture are just supplemental side lighting and wouldn't be enough to illuminate that large of an area - I have a 1000w HID up top.

hmm would it be cheaper just to fork out the money and buy a 400w HID light and setup some ducting for cooling? and would i be able to use the 400w right through the grow cycle?

How large of an area? 400w would be good for a small grow but you will definately have to also spend some money on a ducting system and a good fan. HIDs get HOT!!! You could try ~400w of CFLs. I managed 5.4 oz off 388w of CFLs in 2.5 months with a simple set-up that didn't require any ducting/heat management.



Might want to check out this simple old grow I did: https://www.rollitup.org/cfl-growing/165396-first-cfl-grow-help-appreciated.html

well im going to build a cabinet to put this in so it can be any size really, just as long as its big enough to fit 2 plants in.

how many CFL's would you recommend per plant?? or should i just get 400w worth no matter how many plants i have?

You generally want around 5000 lumen hitting all surfaces of your plants. 23w bulbs put out 1200-1600 lumens so you would need around four per square foot. If you scrog your plants you only need to deal with a single flat canopy in which case you could space your CFLs 6 inches apart and using 16 23w bulbs decently cover a 3x3ft area - I would recommend a 2.5x2.5' area.

If you don't scrog the maths is a little trickier as you should place bulbs above the canopy as well as on the sides as CFLs don't penetrate very far and you really want to maintain that 5k on ALL SURFACES. You will see noticeable differences growing with CFLs between buds right next to bulbs and those several inches away.

If you are doing this because you need a project go ahead and build a cool vented box and throw a 400 in it. It will give you more work and more to make pretty.

Son, what you are planning sounds a little like what I do. I do 2 sometimes 3 plants at a time, I have a 2x2x4 panda film box that I start them in. I am not able to finish in there as the box is too small in all dimensions, if I was to do it again I would make the tent larger. I have a 4 bulb T5 and it's pretty good but, I have to put some CFL's on the sides once they are out of the tent. There are some advantages to T5 but, initial cost is not one of them. You can't go wrong with 400W of HID as long as you can control the temps. You can always go to T5's later for veg and flower under the HID. I run a mixed spectrum of lights from start to finish and don't swap bulbs as the plants grows. Good luck with whatever you land on.

you can get the stupidest B.S advice in here, especially the "get 400w cfl instead of 400w HID" that's fucking silly gets me pissed to repeat this every fucking day, in fact cfl's will give more heat and less light watt to watt, that is 400w cfl will give more heat less light than 400HID. you might be able to get 5oz with 400w cfls but around 10+oz with 400w hps. no need for side lighting, inefficient adds complications. i use fluro tubes in veg and moms, they work awesome but never in flowering, they just aren't efficient to flower.