New Grower Whats best 600w or a combination of 400w and 250w??

[400w wizard]

Whats best 600w or a combination of 400w and 250w??

I'm Flowering Exodus Cheese, Pineapple Gum and K2.

 

[BigBuddha]

Hey, 400.

I run a wide combination of different lighting depending on what I'm growing, what stage they're at and ambient room temps etc.. and in my humble opinion I find the best possible lighting to be a mix of 7200k metal halides and a dual spectrum bulb. Which wattages again depends on the above conditions.

Right now all I can really afford to run is a 250w dual spec bulb because it's too warm here.. but if it was winter I'd have a 600w MH bulb in the diamond reflector and a 250w dual spec for side-lighting in veg and swap out the MH bulb for a 600w super hps and swap the 250w dual spec for a 4000k MH bulb (basically to get a balance of both blue and red light in different proportions depending on if the plants are vegging or flowering).

If I had to choose one or the other based on resources to get one.. I'd have a 400w 7200k metal halide any day of the week and run that start to finish. Contrary to the urban myth, metal halide spectrum is perfectly fine for producing the same weight buds as HPS.. albeit it visibly smaller, but blue light also increases trich production over red.

To be honest.. I think what's more important than choosing a light is understanding that if a plant is too hot, its leaves cannot absorb CO2, and thus cannot do anything with all that light anyway, so in many cases a smaller light with less heat will produce more bud than a bigger light with more heat.

That's my vote on it, anyway.

 

[growdawg30'z]

600 all they way bro yea the 400 and 250 is more light but also more equipment then you need and thats just another outlet you have to use and just one more thing to go wrong.....

 

[Killijin]

600 Watt systems have the highest lumen to watt ratio of all ballast sizes. - Jorge Cervantes Has anyone used one of those MH HPS conversion bulbs? If so, what are the results?

 

[400w wizard]

Well ive been keeping temps down and my buds are visibly getting bigger by the day now im using both 400w and 250w. my electric is kinda high but im getting better results than ive every had.

 

[littleT]

i agree that bigger is not always better.i grew last year with 2 --150 watt hps----did good--went to a 400 and the heat factor is killing plants .cant keep temps down temps at times 120 degree in shed--so until winter i will go back to the 2 150 watters--

 

[400w wizard]

the uk summer has had mine upto 89 deg, but always roughly at 87 deg, im fairly happy i think the end result will work out fine

 

[Nelson]

How do you cool a 6 KW room? I guess that sure doesn't need heat in the winter. Maybe you don't run in the Summer.

I think much depends on your room setup & size, number of plants, size of plants and what bulb one is running.
Overall 600w tend to the wattage of choice just because it's a happy medium between 1kw & 400w. It's the best bang for the buck if you could only buy 1 ballast set. But it is possible to provide better coverage & penetration using multiple ballasts.

I used to run several rooms. I had my 6kw room (6 - 1000w ballasts), 1.2kw room (2 - 600w) and another 1.2kw room (3 - 400w). Obviously the 1000watter room yielded the most but also costs the most to run. The other two rooms - well it depended on what strains I was running. If it was a tall sativa - the 600w room did better than the 400w, probably due to being about to penetrate further down into the plant yet still be hung high. 400w can be pulled in closer to the plant than the 600w but not by much. I like how the plants turn out using the Philips HPS-Retro CMH bulb but the largest wattage it comes out in is the 400w.