150 Watt HPS Fixture

[FormulaX]

I recently purchased a Sun System brand HPS 150 watt fixture.

I only had 2 aquarium grow lights before that, and after only 1 day of having this lighting up, my young lettuce plants are already growing toward the light.  

I bought the 150 watt because my system is small, and im on a college budget.  I found it on Amazon.com, the link is below.  This light is extremely bright, my system is in my room and i had to make a aluminum foil covered cardboard barrier to block the light out.  it's like having a mini sun in your room....

http://www.amazon.com/Sun-System%C2%AE-Grow-Light-Fixture/dp/B001JL...

[FormulaX]

Here are 2 pictures of the same plant, pic 1 is the day before setting up the 150 watt light, and the second picture is today, 4 days of the light being on for 12 hours a day

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

I have one too, but from my research revealed that plants like a higher K of 6500-7000 while in the vegetative state (which would be florescent like a T5) and a lower K of 2700 -3200 for flowering which would be the HPS. My growth isn't off the charts with the HPS but then again my system is new and I have nothing to compare it with.

I am considering augmenting the system with fluorescents if growth doesn't pick up.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

Sean just make sure that the light is close enough to your lettuce/plants (without being hot, a small fan blowing across the bottom of the bulb would help). You don't want your lettuce to be stretching too much. Stretch like Jonathan alluded to, may be unavoidable since you went with the HPS (over the higher Kelvin rated MH. Generally MH bulbs are used for vegetative growth and emit a much bluer light (thick stalks, stocky, tight inter-nodal growth), and then people switch to HPS for flowering/fruit set since HPS has more light in the red range...kind of like the late summer sun. Make sense, blue light for veg, red light for flower...

Although, you probably wont have that much of a problem. You are more apt to get stretching from that light being placed too far away.

Lettuce and herbs generally have pretty low light requirements (relatively speaking).

Should you ever want to supplement with more lights definitely take what Johnathan said into consideration and get something in the 5000K to 6500K (best)  range. Weather MH or fluoros. These are usually called as "DayLite" or "CoolWhite" fuorescent tubes. The T-8's are kinda weak unless you ODNO (OverDriveNormalOperation) them (look it up, really easy to do) or for about the same cash you can get HighOutput T-5 results for cheap T-8 money (at least I believe so) with PL-Lighting...Give this a read if your bored  http://aquaponicscommunity.com/group/artificiallighting/forum/topic...

Good Luck :)

[FormulaX]

thanks for the advise, i do have 1 flora-glow light that i used to growing plants in my aquarium, it's about 3 feet long and right next to the HPS bulb.  I know it's not nearly as powerful, but the plants are still getting some of the blue spectrum.

[Jason Yahner]

Lol. Well I guess a mini sun is what those of us growing indoors are all trying to create.