Viewing post #1881698 by Poolguy42

alex22ccc said:ok, i finally went to wal-mart and grabbed some new CFL's for my indoor grow box.

before, i was using these two large 42 watt CFL's that were very "warm white" light (2700K) and they were hurting my plants...


so i did a bit of research on light spectrum and plant growth. and found out how having only "warm white" light can do bad things to plants.. stretch them out, etc...

so i went out and got 4 of these, (19watt, 1300 lumen for each) and a color temperature of 5000K.



im getting only a little less lumen than i was before, (5200 instead of 5400)
but i think giving my plants a balanced light spectrum is well worth it...

thing is... it seems like they are growing slower.. enough to notice.

so my question is, is 5000K color temperature decent for growing???

Plain and simple no! The way I understand it, 2700k and 6500k are the main color temps for plants. The 2700k(red)bulbs in my opinion were not hurting your plants at all they were actually doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. You can grow a plant using only 2700k bulbs and more than likely they will grow faster than normal but as you probably saw the stems were thin and too weak to support themselves, am I correct? I thought so. Try adding 6500k CFL and I'm pretty sure you'll be able to notice a tremendous difference, the growth will slow down but the plants will start to strengthen enough to stand on their own and the vegging will grow thicker and greener as 6500k(blue) color temps tend keep plants Short and thick. In my experience with lights a 2;1 red to blue wattage is optimal. 40watts red 20watts blue