Cfl Set Up Advice

[Bashar Assad]

So this is my second grow and I'm switching from using leds to cfl's. I found that with leds I couldnt get as high a lumen out put as I wanTed. But with cfl's I can get a lot higher of a lumen output and run cooler. So this is for vegging these lights, I'm just wondering if this is a good set up of lights for three afghan ryders in a 60L dwc in a 2'x4'x5' tent.

3 x 85w 5500k 6000 lumen cfl's
6 x 105w 5500k 7000 lumen cfl's.
3 x 55 w 2700k 3600 lumen cfl's

That gives me 70800 lumens and mostly blue spectrum light at 5500k but still a bit of red spectrum light at 2700k at a 3:1 ratio.

Thus is for the vegging cycle mind you bloom I have to work out still.

So will these cfl's get me some good sized vegging plants? I can get them fairly close to the plants as they don't run hot or even that warm and I have a 12" oscillating fan, 8" fan, 4" inline exhaust fan and 5090btu ac intake blowing over the cfl's.

 

[cocoJoe]

imho
That is plenty of light to veg plants..
How do the plants look??

Peace

 

[J Bleezy]

My first grow I grew a monster mother plant with 4 26 w CFL's. I bought a bathroom vanity panel($5), wired it up and hung it over it. I like t5's better, but if you have cfl's on deck, might as well give em a shot.

 

[Bashar Assad]

The plants I'm gonna be vegging out in there are still in my seedling closet and about a week out from being put in tent with the cfl's. Last grow I used three 300w leds and I was pleased with the results in bloom but I was kinda unimpressed with the growth of the plants during vegging.

 

[J Bleezy]

Hmmmm. Maybe your plants just had not taken off yet and that's why you though they weren't vegging well. Almost ALL complaints I read about LED are the exact opposite. About how they veg really well, but once flowering comes around they don't really do as well. I'm gonna be doing myfirst run with LED starting in about a week.

 

[Bashar Assad]

Well I think they were stunted because the first set of true leaves went totally yellow which I believe is a deficiency in nitrogen. As far as I know that element the plant uses for creating foliage so if I was lacking in N I would think they must have lost some growth. Also since half if each plants leaves where yellow I'd assume they can't photosynthesize at thier max potential which would lead to slowed growth. For almost five days they barely grew in the tent after xfer and after they're leaves turned back to green and I upped the TDS and added AN B52 they have exploded in growth so I dunno but I'm thinking I lost some of my plants potential. Another factor is that right before I xfered them they were accidently not watered for over a day and a half and their rapid rooters were bone dry and their dense white roots had shriveled up and looked very sad. Im not sure but I think it affected the initial growth of them vegging as well as they had to be restablished.

Last grow I used three 300w multi band leds during the grow. One vertical and two pointed horizontally at the plants. They loved it for flowering and one was a monster of a plant but for veg it left a bit to be desired.

So I also redid the light set up for my tent and this is what ive finally finished with after two days of testing and switching bulbs....

3 x 85w 5500k 6000 lumen cfls
8 x 105w 5500k 7000 lumen cfl's
3 x 55 w 2700k 3600 lumen cfl's
1 x 40w 4100k 2600 lumen cfl

I'm getting a max temp of 78°F and the average is about 74-75°F with an RH of 44%. The reservoirs temp stays aroud 64°F. All the cfl's are at plant level so the sides of the cfl's face the plants as they are not hanging above them. The tents temp and humidity is taken at the exhaust port and at seedling level it's about 72°F on average.

 

[Bashar Assad]

Okay so after a bit of temperature monitoring and such I needed to tweak the lights as the average temperature was hitting the low 80's. I'm using this configuration and the plants are growing really nicely.....

6 x 105w 5500k 7000 lumen cfl's
3 x 85w 5500k 6000 lumen cfl's
3 x 55w 270ok 3600 lumen cfl's

The average temperature is noe 75°F and the RH is averaging 45% . The lights are beside the plants so the light coming from the sides of the cfl's is hitting the plants. They're all about 4" 'away from the plants and have an 8" fan and 12" oscillating fan blowing on each row and a 5000btu ac blowing down the space between the two rows of cfl's.

I decided to work on my bloom lights set up and decided to go with cfl's as well ('I'm starting to become a huge fan of these! ').

Here's what I'm thinking of using.....

8 x 55w 2700k 3600 lumen cfl's
7 x 23w 2700k 1600 lumen cfl's
3 x 23w 3500k 16oo lumen cfl's
3 x 85w 5500k 6000 lumen cfl's

I was thinking of making them into 7 groups that have the following configuration.....

Group 1: 2x 55w 2700k, 1 x 23w 3500k, 1 x 23w 2700k

Group 2: 2 x 55w 2700k

Group 3: 3 x 23w 2700k, 1 x 23w 3500k

Group 4: '3 x 85w 5500k

Group 5: '3 x 23w 2700k, '1 x '23w 3500k

Group 6: '2 x 55w 2700k

Group '7: '2 'x 55w 2700k

How's that look'?