[The Butcher]

heres some useful info for you..this willl help you get a better grasp on the lighting issue:
(if you need any more help trust me this is the site to get you where your going, and feel free to either p.m me or just post)
Fluorescent Plant Grow Lights
Recent advances in fluorescent technologies provide the indoor gardener with a multitude of fluorescent plant growing options.

Standard Fluorescents are an excellent choice for starting seedlings to get a jump start on spring plantings. They also are excellent for cultivating a cool weather harvest in the basement year round. Leaf lettuce, spinach, and herbs all will do well year round under fluorescent lamps.

The trick to using them successfully is to keep standard fluorescent bulbs no further than 4 inches away from the tops of the plants. Since the tubes burn relatively cool to the touch, you do not have to worry about burning plants unless they are actually touching the bulb. Fluorescent tubes are an excellent choice for the display and grow lighting of african violets, small cacti and succulents, and many kitchen herbs.

New advances in color blending make full-spectrum fluorescents one of the truest color rendering lamps on the market today. Standard fluorescent tubes are twice as efficient as incandescent bulbs, producing twice as many lumens per watt of energy consumed and have an average usable life span of up to 20,000 hours... more than 25 times as long as an incandescent.

High Output Fluorescents produce almost twice as much light as standard fluorescents while still burning very cool to the touch. HO fluorescent fixtures have a very thin profile, making them extremely useful in vertically limited areas. High Output Fluorescent fixtures are available in 2, 4, 6, and 8 tube models, making them ideal for a wide variety of horticultural applications. An 8-tube 4-foot model produces approximately the same amount of lumens as a 400 watt Metal Halide fixture, but with much less heat and the ability to more evenly spread that light over the coverage area. High Output Fluorescents produce about 5,000 lumens per 54 watt 4-foot tube and are available in warm (3000K) or cool (6500K) versions. Also available are 2-foot 28 watt tubes that produce 2,450 initial lumens. Average usable life span for High Output Fluorescent tubes is about 10,000 hours.

Compact Fluorescents take the cool burning fluorescent technology and pack it into a focused, high output "bulb", that you can use not only for propagation, but for growing larger plants as well. Compact fluorescents work in specially designed reflectors that efficiently direct light to the plants, much like the high intensity discharge lamps described below. Compact fluorescent bulbs are also available in warm (3000K) or cool (6500K) versions. Average usable life span for Compact Fluorescent bulbs is about 10,000 hours.

High Output Fluorescent / HID Hybrids combine the incredibly bright cool burning power of high output fluorescents with the penetration that can only be achieved through high intensity discharge technology. The primary advantages to these fixtures is their blend of light colors and broad even coverage.



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Metal Halide (MH)
High Intensity Discharge (HID) Plant Grow Lights
Metal halide is a highly efficient light source capable of delivering a white light in the range of 2700 to 5500 Kelvin degrees with typical Color Rendering Index (CRI) ratings in the mid-60's to mid-70's. Some lamp chemistries even obtain CRI's in the 80s. The CRI is an index that measures how closely an artificial light source matches the natural colors of sunlight, with 100 being a perfect score. In contrast, high pressure sodium lamps yield yellow lighting (2200K) and have a very poor color rendering index of 22.

By varying the blend of chemicals in the arc tube, metal halide engineers are able to alter the characteristics of the light output.


This flexibility in design is what makes metal halide lighting so versatile. White light is a very important attribute of metal halide technology, because it is the closest to the natural sunlight that people prefer.
Metal halide lamps are widely used where color rendering is important such as stadiums, malls, manufacturing plants, and even your local supermarket.


For horticultural purposes, metal halides tend to produce a shorter, more compact plant habit that more closely resembles plants grown outdoors. A plants appearance growing under most metal halide lamps is almost identical to those growing outside, which makes it the preferred lamp for use in living areas. Horticultural metal halide lamps have an enhanced red spectrum, which is added for increased fruiting and flowering without sacrificing plant appearance.

Metal halide lamps are about five times more efficient than their incandescent counterparts and last up to 25 times longer, with a usable lifespan between 10,000 and 20,000 hours, depending on the wattage.


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High Pressure Sodium (HPS)
High Intensity Discharge (HID) Plant Grow Lights
High pressure sodium lamps have been used for years in less color critical applications such as parking lots, street lights and as supplemental greenhouse lighting. The benefit of high pressure sodium lamps to the horticultural industry is their ability to enhance the fruiting and flowering process in plants. The orange/red spectrum HPS produces is the spectrum plants use in their reproductive processes, which generally produces larger harvests of higher quality fruits or flowers.


The major drawback to growing under high pressure sodium alone is that the plants tend to be taller and leggier with a longer internodal length than plants grown under metal halide.
Another minor negative is that plants generally do not appear very healthy growing under HP Sodium light. The operative word being 'appear', because in fact most plants do grow very well under HPS lighting.


Due to the poor color rendering of high pressure sodium, the plants tend to look pale, washed out or nitrogen starved.

Additional benefits to high pressure sodium lighting are incredibly long usable bulb life... up to two years in many cases; and unparralled efficiency at six times more light output per watt of energy consumed than a standard incandescent bulb.

Due to their high efficiency and the fact that plants grown in greenhouses get all the blue light they need naturally, HP Sodium lamps are the preferred supplemental greenhouse light.

Combination HPS/MH lamps combine a metal halide bulb and a high pressure sodium bulb in the same reflector, either with a single integrated ballast assembly or two separate ballast assemblies. The combination of blue metal halide light and red high pressure sodium light creates an ideal spectral blend and extremely high outputs.

Convertible, Switchable & Two-Way lamps are configured to burn either a metal halide bulb or an equivalent wattage high pressure sodium bulb in the same fixture, but not at the same time. These fixtures are ideal for propagating and vegetatively growing plants under the metal halide, then switching to a high pressure sodium bulb for the fruiting or flowering stage of plant growth. Generally, all that is required to change between one and the other is to change the bulb and set a switch to the appropriate setting.