experince with t5ho grows ? details any yield or grow time pics ? also watts used etc

[drcelticgreen]

anyone have experience with full grows from start to finish using only t5ho's . any help would be especially appreciated. is it worth using t5ho's as a grow - flower light exclusivley ? based on the wattage used and the flower time using these type of lights .

 

[Chunkypigs]

hey Dr,
i have a 2' x 4' 430w 8 bulb badboy fixture with the quantum 6500K veg bulbs. I love it! plants vegged under this light have a much tighter bushier structure compared to clones vegged under my MH. the best plants I have now I left under the t5 for the 1st 2-3 weeks of flowering. they set about 2x as many buds compared to plants that were moved to HID lamps when they were flipped. The T5 HO fixtures are really expensive but I have been looking at industrial highbay T5 fixtures that are much less expensive.
http://www.costlesslighting.com/hig...bay-30000-lum-120277-324w-fixture-p-1730.html

I have a few small plants finishing flowering under the t5 now but they seemed to lose steam after the stretch. If you can only use 1 light due to space or money reasons I think I would choose HID but if you have the space and finances I would start under T5 and switch.

try googling " Growing under 2 Quantum T5 Badboy System" . It will take you to a nice grow on another site that uses them through flowering with good results.

BTW my T8's seem to work just as well as the T5's for the 1st 2 weeks of veg. then the plants under the T5's start to out grow the T8's.
good luck!

 

[Aerohead]

hey Dr,
i have a 2' x 4' 430w 8 bulb badboy fixture with the quantum 6500K veg bulbs. I love it! plants vegged under this light have a much tighter bushier structure compared to clones vegged under my MH. the best plants I have now I left under the t5 for the 1st 2-3 weeks of flowering. they set about 2x as many buds compared to plants that were moved to HID lamps when they were flipped. The T5 HO fixtures are really expensive but I have been looking at industrial highbay T5 fixtures that are much less expensive.
http://www.costlesslighting.com/hig...bay-30000-lum-120277-324w-fixture-p-1730.html

I have a few small plants finishing flowering under the t5 now but they seemed to lose steam after the stretch. If you can only use 1 light due to space or money reasons I think I would choose HID but if you have the space and finances I would start under T5 and switch.

try googling " Growing under 2 Quantum T5 Badboy System" . It will take you to a nice grow on another site that uses them through flowering with good results.

BTW my T8's seem to work just as well as the T5's for the 1st 2 weeks of veg. then the plants under the T5's start to out grow the T8's.
good luck!

I have extensive knowledge of lighting learned from years of growing corals in reef tanks and MJ in rooms so I will share some of what I learned from spending literally thousands on lighting for both.

First, the reason the T5's appear to be out performing the MH for veg is because the plants are growing much slower under the T5's.

This naturally brings the nodes closer and makes the plants appear more compact. I am not knocking T5's at all here, they are likely the proper choice for veg for most of us. Where t5's don't work so well in veg is when you are running high plant numbers (100's) and trying to feed a fast turnover in the flower rooms. MH will kick the crap out of T5 for rapid veg in a fast system.

I absolutely love the quality of the superior spectrum fluoro offers but this is at a cost of yield and density. Fluoros have never been close to the penetration of HID's so it's a trade off.

The best performance I have seen is combining the two but it's difficult to do it right because ideally you would have the fluoros kicking out the initial spectrum and the HID's picking it up and driving it deep into the canopy.

To explain, photons are moving, they have mass and can be weighed, so if a fluoro is throwing out the superior spectrum, the HID picks up these photons and drives them deep into the canopy.

I learned this from modifying aquarium hoods to grow MJ. These hoods were 4' long, 10" deep and 14" wide. They ran 2X 250 MH and 1 110w VHO fluoro on each side. I swapped the 250MH for 600w HPS leaving in the 10,000k 110w VHO fluoros and had the best bud quality plus quantity ever seen by these eyes.

The reason I don't mix the two these days is that I'm going for GPW and HID's are still king.

If you have the time to veg with T5's the results are outstanding but if you are in a hurry to build root mass for flower to max out yields, go HID...

The main advantage to veggin with T5's is short bushy plants which is fine for most grows but I think this is exactly what we dont want for vert growing. Back to the root mass, it's everything, plants vegged under HID's will have a stronger root structure than the same plants under T5's. Root mass determines the capibility of the plant to knock out big nugs.

 

[bonsai]

Very interesting aerohead, this "driving photons" concept intrigues me, I will have to do some research. Thanks.

 

[Chunkypigs]

Oh man! that is interesting... yet another bit of high tech that will get me dreaming, along with this ultra sonic wave machine and CO2. it's tough trying to figure out how to get going and I'm actually really happy with the inexpensive 1000w old school light package that i bought. it produced great buds and it's cheap and it does it's best to drown out the noise that my exhaust fan produces. under $200.
Thanks for the info Aero!

 

[pearlemae]

I grow from start to finish with T5HOcfl. I have a box the flower side is 2 ft deep 3 ft wide 4 ft high. Generally I put 4 plants in OBBT buckets. I pump 3 psi of air to the roots of each plant with a 6 inch air stone,in lava rock.
The last crop two weeks harvested were a G13, Lsd and a ? produced, as follows G13 37gr after a two week dry, Lsd 39 gr and the mystery plant was smaller and only gave me 20 gr. I know it's not exactly poundage,but for the space and heat considerations it works very well. Quality of my bud is top notch, but you have to have good genetics to get killer weed. I know every one will say get HID but as it stands at present cfl's are the way I need to go.
So proofs in the pics Here's some past runs.

 

[PetFlora]

Aerohead: Ya had me up until suggesting that T5 (HO) produces inferior root mass.

I am on my second grow with a Bad Boy 8 bulb, and yes the plants are denser, even the males. One plant was super dense and bushy, I would have bet it was a sweet female, but no.

Roots: Yes my roots are more delicate, BUT, I attribute this to dialing in my aeroponic method.

Roots grown with high pressure pumps and low flow mist heads that 'atomize' the nutrients can be extremely efficient, at least when the lateral roots are loaded with fuzzy root hairs. Now accomplishing that does take some doing, but it makes me think such roots do not need to expend energy becoming 'brawny'.

hth

 

[whodare]

ya cant do this with floro's sorry...

quality is still there too

 

[mg75]

yes you can grow vertically using any kind of light you may use horizontally.

 

[mg75]

and 39 grams per one plant from floros is impressive in my book

 

[whodare]

i never said you couldn't grow any direction with floro's just not like this