MH vs HPS in bloom

[Stonefree69]

Looks like a no-brainer. Even Gavita recognizes this. Also I think they're trying 2-hps w/a 5,600k plasma in the middle. I gonna try 2 bare bulbs w/the 1st one mounted facing up on a camera tripod w/fan underneath, the other hanging down from ceiling.

 

[the gnome]

hey stoney, from everything Ive seen with my own grow its def worth it to start running mh in bloom, and the more i look around I'm seeing other successful grows w/mh in bloom,
I just ran across another 2 minutes ago!


https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=57927

I'll be busy in the morning. I'm helping take down a friends harvest.

This is Hash Plant grown in our stadium set up. I've been doing this for many years. It has a very quick turn over due to the one week veg. If we are fortunate enough to have space to prep we can throw them into flower immediately and get an extra crop a year in.

We usually get close to 2lbs per 1000W MH.


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As you can see these plants are under 2 feet tall and there is pretty much solid bud from top to bottom. I find this makes the best use of a small room because you use little floor space and take advantage of your height.

Those plants could not hold their own weight for the last 10 days.

We just hang the MH's down the middle evenly spaced out. We have one fan at the top of the doorway/enterance of the chamber and then the blower for air out at the other end. It creates a wind tunnel that cools the bulbs. Outside the chambers we bring in outside air. It is drawn into the chambers by the exhaust.

Best we've done with this system to date is 7.5 lbs with 4 bulbs using 6.5'x10' of floor space with a 6.5' ceiling.

 

[Stonefree69]

hey stoney, from everything Ive seen with my own grow its def worth it to start running mh in bloom, and the more i look around I'm seeing other successful grows w/mh in bloom,
I just ran across another 2 minutes ago!


https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=57927

Wow, that's an excellent yield for Hash Plant w/MH no less. Looks like it even competes w/vertical donut grows in gpw. I'm tempted to try stadium w/4-600's, just need a little rearranging. Sure has it dialed.

 

[the gnome]

Wow, that's an excellent yield for Hash Plant w/MH no less. Looks like it even competes w/vertical donut grows in gpw. I'm tempted to try stadium w/4-600's, just need a little rearranging. Sure has it dialed.

oh hell ya
i'm still planning on the para's in my new room but after reading norther farmers stadium grow thread, it damn sure has me thinking about my options w/bare a bulb stadium setup

very doable in a my new 14 x 20 room

 

[Bud buster]

I'm running a four hundred watt hps with six 23 watt 6500kcfls opposite the 400 hps and most of the leaves rotate to the cfls even ones closest to the much more powerful hps so I'm wondering if I'm wasting power with the hps it would seem that the cfls give a more usable spectrum.

 

[Stonefree69]

I figure in nature even this time of year while the sun does have more red-yellow spectrum the sun is still pretty high around noon time. Here in Arizona for example it hit 106 today, but down to 70's in morning. So plants have evolved to use the blue spectrum in fall as well. HPS still is useful and can help with yields but used with blue/UV MH, T5s or cfls will make them look nice and green and also produce more resin. Plants still use the full spectrum all year round just in different ratios. Maybe in the artic sun's more yellow in fall as it skirts the horizon but we know they tend to grow in the more temperate areas or below 40 degrees latitude.

 

[bluntmassa]

you inspired me I just bought 2 new bulbs cause one cheap bulb that came with the ballast blew but I got a digilux 600w mh and a lumatek 600w hps and I'm just gonna box the other cheapo bulb for a spare probally won't be too good of a test this run but my next run will tell which is best.

 

[señorsloth]

well in the spirit of keeping our minds open...i'm gonna give this a try...i wont be going to the hydro shop till the weekend but i'll get a metal halide bulb to replace my hortilux eye...this is right at a point in my perpetual that i can test an entire bed start to finish...and because of my super tight super small clone sog my plants, and my subsequent harvests are very easy to compare vs bush style growing where two similar plants can yield very differently...with mine MOST of my plants are literally within a gram of each other so i think my cab is uniquely set up to work well with experiments like these...if i wasn't depending on a good harvest each month to pay my all of my bills i would do more but i really can't afford to test things that i don't think have a good chance of increasing or at the least not hurting my yields...

anyways it seems there are a lot of different brands of mh, and even several spectrums of mh...i don't know which would be the best so here is what i'm thinking, i would like to know what is the BEST mh bulb...and thats what i'll buy, since right now i'm using the BEST hps bulb they make imo...price is not an issue, because i have always believed one quality bulb that lasts a year will produce better quality light than 6 cheepo bulbs that you have to change every 2 months, and start losing efficiency within a few weeks of first turning them on...hortilux doesn't start to dip for about 10-12 months, so it's much more consistant imo, and 90 bucks for 12 harvests of 150-200 grams is cheeper in my mind than 120 bucks for 6 cheepo bulbs that don't yeild quite as well(but not by much)they cost similar but i believe in not half assing things...

the definition of half assing something is not giving up on a task because it's too hard or too expensive...it's giving up on a task that SPECIFICALLY ISN'T too hard or expensive...taking short cuts for no reason, for pure laziness, or in this instance, fiscal prudism...the guy that thinks ahead and buys in bulk saves over the guy that forgoes reason and buys a dime bag everyday...high end lights are not much more expensive over time than cheep ones, if not cheaper, and the produce more light, in better spectrum than cheep bulbs made to light streets, not plants...

so basically i'm not willing to use anything but the best...after all, your bulb is the single most important part of growing...so what is the best bulb? or maybe the top 3 in case my shop doesn't carry one brand...ive heard digilux are up there but i would love to hear from people that have had experience using mh bulbs, which i don't, except for a tiny 150w system i had for veg almost a decade ago...anyways i'll post my results here as well starting next week when i screw the bulb in...

 

[Stonefree69]

Philips and Gavita ae supposed to be the standard but don't think can be used for vertical bare bulb and is proprietary. I know someone measured the actual output and was pretty close w/a bunch of others: Ulbricht sphere PAR test (PPF) of several popular 1000W lamps This I believe is for HPS lamps but shows what are decent brands. Digilux and Plantmax are pretty good and also don't cost as much as say the Hortilux (which puts out 1-5% more light). I don't know about the dropoff curves and longevity though.

 

[mexcurandero420]

Very good informative thread.Interesting about using MH alone in the flowering period.

Keep on growing

 

[señorsloth]

Philips and Gavita ae supposed to be the standard but don't think can be used for vertical bare bulb and is proprietary.

ya i don't think you could pay me to use a generic bulb like philips ever again...i run quality bulbs made to last a long time, not the cheapest thing in the store that i can't trust to be efficient more than 1-2 months...i guess i'll do my own bulb shopping...lol it can't be that hard...

 

[John.Hammond]

Looks like a no-brainer. Even Gavita recognizes this. Also I think they're trying 2-hps w/a 5,600k plasma in the middle. I gonna try 2 bare bulbs w/the 1st one mounted facing up on a camera tripod w/fan underneath, the other hanging down from ceiling.

Dont bother pointing one up. In a verticle set up little if any light is released in the direction of the socket. You want max energy hitting the plant so hang them all and let the bulb face your plants.


Also, great thread Im gona have to try and use my MH the whole grow, but I hate the heat.

 

[Stonefree69]

Dont bother pointing one up. In a verticle set up little if any light is released in the direction of the socket. You want max energy hitting the plant so hang them all and let the bulb face your plants.


Also, great thread Im gona have to try and use my MH the whole grow, but I hate the heat.

Actually I don't want light going below the socket because that'll be at midpoint or lower part of the plants and looking up underneath the leaves. The bulb that's higher will be near the tops of plant canopy facing down. Here's a link:Tutorial: How to build your own secure lamp holder for a stacked bulb vertical grow And a pic:

Outside of trying to have 2 bulbs in cool tubes facing down in one line, the cords would have to be a good 6" apart using 2 bare bulbs facing down and block even more light if insulated. Note this isn't for one bulb just facing up, but for 2 bulbs "stacked". One facing up and the other above it in-line facing down. This is also to have plants surround bulbs in a donut arrangement, not a coliseum.

 

[señorsloth]

well boys i went and bought a metal halide bulb...i don't know much about the brand i got cause i didn't do a lot of reasearch before i bought it...i found one i wanted online, a digilux red but the store didn't carry them so i just asked for whatever high end metal halide brand they carry with red spectrum supliment and they handed me this sunmaster warm deluxe...

i'll be swapping out my hortilux eye for this sumaster warm deluxe later tonight, when the light turns on...at that point i can start to test this theory as well...from the little research ive done it seems that the PAR rating of metal halides is much better than hps...using 2 400w bulbs, the par watts of your average mh are like 140w, meaning i think that out of the 400w initially pushed into the bulb, 50-60% gets wasted as heat and then some gets wasted in the wrong spectrums...leaving you with only 140 watts in the spectrum that plants see, thats your PAR wattage...the thing is, hps only average like 120-125 PAR watts...because they aren't really in the ideal spectrum...lumens measure what people can see, and in that case the hps wins hands down, 56,000 lumens to 38,000...but par watts are what plants can see and mh are clear winners in that, metal halides put out about 15% more light than hps, if you only consider the light that plants can see...

something else i found;

It is good to note that of all the colors in the spectrum, plants need a larger percentage of the blue spectrum to be healthy. This is the color that drives photosynthesis and trans-locates sugars. The red, orange and yellow colors of the spectrum are hormonal tripping colors. This is to say that when the plant has these electromagnetic wavelengths pass through the leaves, bloom hormones are produced in the anticipation of the fall and winter seasons.

it seems then that blue light is doing all the work of growing AND budding, but the reds just tell the plant too bud, and to bud a lot or a little...i dunno...but it all kinda makes sense why mh would work better than hps for all stages of growth...

so does anybody know anything about sunmaster warm deluxe bulbs? did i make the right choice? how long can i expect it to last?(at 80 bucks a bulb it better be long!) and does anybody have any experience using them that could give me a first hand testimonial?

 

[bluntmassa]

well I got my digilux 600 watt mh (not conversion) and a lumatek 600 watt hps I've had them running for close to 1 month side by side from clone and the same mother and the hps is kicking ass its a noticeable difference the mh plants aint stretching their colas for shit and the buds are just smaller all together. but I still got about a month left I'll be back if the mh somehow does better but I highley doubt it will.

 

[the gnome]

good to see ya giving it a go blunt
what strain(s) are you growing?

the digi 600w, is it the enhanced with more red/orange?
whats the Kelvin rating on your bulb

 

[bigscoot]

nice thread bout tha last year in my bloom room i been runnin in this order
(600hps 1000mh 600hps 600hps 1000mh 600hps) n i swear all tha plants right under tha mh seem like that got a lil bit bigger but thats all resin seemed pretty much tha same(but wasnt really checkin how it stacked up 2 hps) i was just doin it 2 have both spectrums but now im gonna make it my priorty 2 look n see how tha resin production final product is
peace

 

[gingerale]

Yeah I'm sold. Need to replace my old Hortilux HPS bulbs soon so I'm eyeing a couple of those Cool Deluxe 1000W. My garden is pretty much dialed in, runs like clockwork, and running a number of different strains too so I'm interested to see with my own eyes what the deal is here.

 

[Hash Zeppelin]

I am running hps side by side next to a mh and so far the hps side is looking way better

 

[Stonefree69]

I am running hps side by side next to a mh and so far the hps side is looking way better

Guess I would believe you, especially yield wise. How does the color and resin production look on both? I'm going for a combo of MH & HPS to get the best of both worlds - yield and quality. Plants still get a fuller spectrum that way, like in autumn the sun isn't "yellow or red" all day - especially around noon time.