Lighting choices for veg tent - your thoughts

[bluthird]

Just setting up for my first grow. (well, first since 1980 something so it's like starting over)

I've already picked up a 48" x 48" x 80" tent and a 1000W adjustable ballast with both 1000W HPS & MH bulbs.

So here's what I am thinking - I'd like to get a second tent and dedicate that one for vegging.
My dilemma? Lighting for the veg tent. I'm trying to decide between LED, T5 HO or CFL.
Reasons for not going with MH in the veg? More energy efficient, less cooling and scrubber requirements, those may be false ideals though.

So disregarding the flower tent with HPS, what would *you* do for lighting a 4 x 4 veg tent and WHY?
We can eliminate the cost factor.

 

[Icemud]

I would have to say the 2 best lights I have used for veg are in this order...


Advanced LED EX-VEG 200's which are an All Blue LED grow lights. They have provided the fastest growth out of the many lights I have used, create really tight internodes with lots of auxillary branching, and run very cool and quite with very little wattage. I highly recommend them. (I currently use these for VEG)The only downside is that its very hard to see any leaf issues or deficiencies under the all blue spectrum, so its almost necessary to have some kind of normal light source like a CFL bulb to check on the plants every so often. But other than that, I love these panels for how fast they veg my plants. (I still am trying to determine if the lack of full spectrum does anything to the overall quality but am awaiting the results of my current grow for that)

I also had extremely good luck with Ceramic Metal Halide bulbs for veg. They are extremely good full spectrum bulbs which seemed to veg my plants extremely well and are cheaper than going LED (short term) but will cost more over long term due to bulb replacements and higher electricity usage, but still grow amazing plants both in veg and flower. Now I haven't used the newer CMH bulbs, and so I don't know how well they work but the original phillips mastercolor 400w CMH bulbs (that run in HPS) ballast are amazing!

A few other honorable mentions for veg:

Advanced LED XTE:
This is a multi use panel, both veg and flower, but has 2 separate dimmer dials for each spectrum. They do an amazing job at veg, have very intense light and a great full spectrum. I love my XTE's I am running, mostly use them for flowering because of their intensity, but they also veg very nicely too.

Ushio Optiblue MH conversion bulbs
amazing spectrum and also grew my plants very fast. Very expensive bulbs though and will also add up to cost with increased electricity usage and bulb replacement.

Top LED reflector series:
These panels are cheap cost, have very good coverage for LED and have a 2 switch selectable spectrum and run fairly cool. I use one of these currently in my 3rd tent for clones and sometimes to host mothers. Doesn't seem to veg nearly as fast as the above options, but provides great coverage and perfect for keeping mothers or clones.


If I had a 4x4 tent for VEG only... Obviously not the cheapest route, but for the best results, I probably would go with
2x Advanced LED EX-VEG 200's and 2x XTE 100's,
or
just 4 XTE 100's,
or
just 3x EX-VEG 200's.

Its pretty obvious that I love the Advanced LED lights, and I am having amazing results with them..

Even in my current veg tent which is only 2.5x5'x7' I am running 2x of the EX-VEG lights and only using 1/2 power on each lights...200 total watts... and my plants have had to be cut 4x in half because they keep growing too large