I have some questions about lighting

Hi everyone good morning/night

Currently I use 2 Apollo 6 grow led
The actual wattage 198W-209W*
Want to use CFL bulbs to increase lighting
I have 65W 75W 85W three styles to choose from What will everyone do?

In a 4 * 4 * 6 tent

Thank you

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@Hopkins999 A lot of the times you can get better performance out of an LED socket style light, removing the diffuser. @dbrn32 is good at this. I give him mad props. He will be along shortly. 85W is the better option of the two, and get 3000K color temperature. Warm white usually is the label.

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@Covertgrower Thank you I understand
CFL how to know the actual wattage?
If the five 85w CFL can be equivalent to the actual wattage led 400w it?

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Did you already buy the bulbs? And are those actual wattage or equivalent wattage?

@Covertgrower is right. To get the most out of cfl’s you have to mount them horizontally which can be a pain. If you get household led bulbs (a19) style and remove the diffuser you’ll get a little more par than the typical cfl. Then a top mount with 100% of your light going to canopy is pretty easy. If you get up into the larger cfl bulbs, they can be a little better. But you still have mounting issue, and you should have some sort of reflector over them.

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You have a picture of the bulbs?

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@dbrn32
I have not bought yet
I would like to choose cfl because it is cheaper so…
I do not have photos or I need to provide any information?

Can you link the lights you’re looking at getting? From amazon is acceptable

@dbrn32

Sorry, Amazon does not have the light I want to buy…

And the website is not English.

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I understand. Not sure how I can help

@dbrn32
Fine Thank you!

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Be very careful with those wattages: Usually manufacturers advertise CFL as “lumens equivalent to incandescent”, so your 75 watt bulb is really like 12 watts. A 12 watt bulb is not going to do much for you. Of course, they do the same thing with LEDs too. Find out the actual watts they draw from the wall.

With a 16 square foot tent, you need at least 560 watts. That’s real watts.

@1BigFella
How should I choose?
Luminous flux?
Watt?
Or other reference basis?

Thank you

35-50 real watts per square foot is just a rule of thumb.

lux is lumens per square meter, so a 20000 lumen light lighting a square meter is 20000 lux. Light 2 square meters with it and you have 10000 lux.

Light (Full sun 117,000 lux)

< 15,000 lux - sparse or “stretchy” growth - plant isn’t getting enough light
15,000 - 50,000 lux - good amount of light for healthy vegetative growth
45,000 - 70,000 lux - optimal amount of light for cannabis plants in the flowering (budding) stage
70,000 - 85,000 lux - a lot of light, some strains will do okay at this light level, but some plants lose their top leaves early under this light intensity, especially plants that are not resistant to heat/light (like many indica-leaning strains)

85,000 lux - at this light intensity, you’ve hit the plant’s “saturation point” which means your plant can’t use all the light (be careful of light bleaching!)

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For CFL: 100W (actual) per square foot
For LED: 25W (actual) per square foot

So for 16 sq.ft., you really should get 2 more of those Apollo LEDs! But to do it with CFL, you’ll need to make up the extra 8 sq.ft.

200W LED = 8 sq.ft x 25W/sq.ft.
800W CFL = 8 sq.ft x 100W/sq.ft.

That’s 4 times more electricity to cover the same area with CFL, you’d be able to pay for 2 more 100W LEDs with the savings in your electric bill!

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ok i need to think about it
Thank you

Oh wait, I misunderstood! I thought you meant you had 2 Apollo lights that were a TOTAL of 200W, so they were 100W each. Then I looked up an Apollo-6, they’re 200W each. So duh, if you’ve got 2 of those, that’s a total of 400W, which is plenty for a 16 sq-ft space. Math hurts! :rofl:

Any of those size CFLs will work great as side lighting, since you can get CFLs within 6" or so. I’d just put any of those, 65-85W CFLs every foot or so around mid-way down the sides. Just remember to check actual watts. I think the 23W CFL I use in my seedling chamber boasted as being like 60W or 75W equivalent on the packaging.

@kushpa
Ha ha ha was misunderstood😊
A light is 200w I have two so 400w
So my light like this is okay?
The current settings

I have some questions about the height of the light?

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I keep my LEDs 18-19" and my CFLs 5-6", found that’s a good space to avoid leaf burn.

@Hopkins999 if you remove the diffusers on the bulbs you’ll get more light.

Those little LED bulbs and CFLs are so weak you need a big dense array of them to do much good. IE. if you have 8 watt LEDs then you need at least 3 per square foot to grow plants. For a 3x3 grow tent, that would be 27 of them! 54 if you are going to flower with only the little LED bulbs.

You can see why the bigger grow lights are a better deal.

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