400 Watt looking like nothing next to 600 watt

[GreenMachine420]

Ok, I have a flower room with a 600 Watt HPS and a 400 Watt HPS. The 600 watt has a hortilux super HPS bulb in it and the 400 watt has a Optilume bulb in it. The thing is that the 400 watt looks like its not even contributing to the grow area with the ammount of light its putting out next to the 600. Ive tried 2 different optilume bulbs and they just glow orange and you really cant tell the difference of light when you unplug them and just let the 600 run. The Super HPS glows very bright and yellowish, not orange-ish.

So my question is, is it normal for a 600 watt to overpower a 400 watt like that or is something wrong?

 

[TribalSeeds]

Do you have reflectors? How are they set-up? Vertical & stacked would be sick

 

[bigAl25]

Put a hortilux super HPS 400 watt bulb in the 400 watt fixture. You will then answer your question. It may be the bulb, or faulty 400 watt ballast. Compare apples to apples. Peace and respect.

 

[GreenMachine420]

No room for a vertical light. Yes my reflector for my 400 watt is very shitty but i got it for free. and the ballast isnt name brand or anything. my 600 watt is a lumateck ballast and a sunspot 6 reflector. but the bulb is bright yellow on th 600 and the 400 watt bulb is orange. i put 2 bulbs in it and their both orange. it visually looks like such little help that im thinking about taking it out and just running the 600.

 

[sog army]

put that 600w next to a thousand.. see the difference.. BOOM!

 

[pinecone]

Is it a magnetic ballast? If so you might want to check your capacitors(?). There is a thread by Simon around here somewhere that documents they fact that they fail over time and goes through how to replace them.

Pine

 

[Airnut]

Look at the output of LUX.
400W is around 50000
600W is around 90000

LUX is for human eyes only, it can only be a guide line for the PAR plants use for growth.
But these numbers explains perfectly why you as human get the impression of almost no lightcontributing from the 400W, is almost half as weak in the lightoutput.

It do contribute to the grow, no doubt there.

 

[Hydro-Soil]

Look at the output of LUX.
400W is around 50000
600W is around 90000

LUX is for human eyes only, it can only be a guide line for the PAR plants use for growth.
But these numbers explains perfectly why you as human get the impression of almost no lightcontributing from the 400W, is almost half as weak in the lightoutput.

It do contribute to the grow, no doubt there.

Yep... this is also the reason why 600's are so nice.
Only 200 more watts and you get an extra 40000 lumens...

Check the 400w threads around here... they definitely contribute. LOL

Stay Safe!