Metal halide or cfl's to veg

[PHATBLUNT420]

as of now i have
[4]27 watt 1800 lmns each
[8]13 watt 900 lmns each
so i have about

14200 lumens.
or i can get a cheap 400w mteal halide bay light fixture

do i have enough lumens to lets say veg around 6 plants??
or should i get the baylight

 

[southflorida]

id say so what kind of bulbs are the first set cfl i assume?

 

[fireboytommy7]

6 plants?! goodness. a 400W MH should put about 39K lumen for cheapest and around 44K for better? either way thats about 3 times what you have. I run a 400W MH for 2 plants so I think HID is the way to go. also if you get the MH you can also get a HPS conversion bulb and run that for flowering. best of both worlds!!

 

[Hightide805]

if your not worried about the electric bill i'd go with the mh personally, but it would about double what you have there, as far as watts

 

[mrniceguy101]

I personally am going with the CFL's for the first 2 weeks and then the MH for the remainder of the vegging.

 

[MMRC Grower]

I've heard that the lowest that you want to be is 2000 lumens per square foot. Ideally, you want to be around 5000 per square foot. Lumens fade FAST with distance. The good thing about CFL's are that you can put them inches away from the plants. I use them for my seedlings and clones, until they get about 6 inches tall. The bad thing with CFL's is that once your plants get going, the lower branches and side branches arnt going to get much light at all. Once your about a foot away from the bulb, your only looking at a few hundred lumen.

So I would use them on plants up to 6 inches, but anything taller than that and you should really go with a MH to get those lower branches growing.