sorry that used up your one question for the day come back tomorrow.. Haha jk.. ask away bro..
Man, tough crowd, lol
Will be brief, which for me means regular length post for most, heh.
Context:
1st grow
Soil
6 plants (currently, may pick up or clone up to 9 others in the next few) but due to requesting certain strains when I got them from the cloner, they range from being cloned 8/20 to 10/10... been nuting and extra lighting the younger ones as hard as I could press them (and FIM'ing and topping the olders) to try to get the sort of caught up and more or less remotely close to the same height and mass overall. Still will be a reach. Plants are roughly 21" on average right now +/- a few inches. 3 Frankenstein, 1 Blue Dream CBD, 1 Orange Purple CBD, 1 Candida.
7'x8'x7'(tall) area plus a couple odd spots with room enough for a plant each, in a 8'x11' dedicated room... just finishing up putting foil-faced foam board on the walls, ceiling, floor.
I also have a 5'x5x80" grow tent I can set up adjacent to the room with secondary heat, etc.
Room has controlled heat for night time, getting a bit of surplus CO2 as the furnace is in the room not far from the door where I'm drawing in air, and I maintain a 28 gal aerated water reservoir, PH to 6.5, to ensure the temps when watering and feeding are good. Botainicare nutes.
Also, need to get pretty good yield (given it's only my first grow) and my medical needs are very high (extreme pain, neurologic condition, migraine, PTSD) and I need to sock away some extra in case I don't get the next grow started for 2-3 months after we move.
...............
Lights (drum roll, here's the main question of the day...) Have been running some old T8s I had lying around and plus 3 LED flouro replacements, plus an 8' commercial white LED that weighs like 45 pounds and looks to be roughly 4000k... They have been supplemented with a few different low-end LEDs I've been testing. Just not impressed with these low end lights (spectrum, output per $/value, hot spotting and coverage overall) and want to upgrade. Crux is the budget: We may have to sell the place and move in about 6 months to a year, so I want to keep the lighting under $700 for now till I see what they next location offers for grow space. Question is: if I only have about $700 for lighting, need to at least cover that 7'x8' room area (and if possible, would be great to have something for the 5'x5' tent to at least run veg in there - unless the flouro and LED flouro replacements are enough(?), what's my best option to buy this week? MH/HPS combo? Lower end CMH? Something else?
Also, bonus round - see my CFO for the $5, she's reallllyyy good about letting me spread cash around, honest, lol - If I need to get a carbon setup and fan for that and/or the lights (can the scrubber and lights share a fan?), what setups should I look at on Amazon?
(Note: was looking at the earlier recs from Events on MH/HPS and filter but wasn't sure it that person's setup, which I had trouble finding) was a close match to mine or not...)
Thanks!!!