Indoor Lighting question

I bought a 4 foot dual bulb set up. I purchased the bulbs and they are as follows:

GE
Sunshine
F40T12
Light output 2250 lumens
5000k Color temp
90 cri

Are these ok for use for indoor Ficus and BRT? I have the bulbs about 4 to 5 inches above the top of the plant

I'm curious about this as well. I'm getting ready to set up a Metal Halide system. Sorry, I can't give any info on this. From my research it seems MH is the best way to go, so I'm going to bite the bullet in the next month or so.

Good luck and have a great week!!!
Sam

The GE bulbs you mentioned will do fine. The higher the Kelvin number the closer they are to outdoor daylight.
Metal Halide lights are a whole different planet. Ask Jerry Meislik about them.
www.bonsaihunk.us/
Iris

Sam Ogranaja wrote:I'm curious about this as well. I'm getting ready to set up a Metal Halide system. Sorry, I can't give any info on this. From my research it seems MH is the best way to go, so I'm going to bite the bullet in the next month or so.

Good luck and have a great week!!!
Sam

Does MH use a lot of electricity? How many watts do you need for say 6- 7"-10" ficus plants? Any good brand to recommend? Thanks.

You can get metal halide and sodium lamps in different sizes. You can get small ones at Home Depot. They are the best lamps for indoor growing, with high output T5 fluorescents the next best thing. Your setup is ok, but the better your lights, the faster the plants will grow.

I don't have experience with brazilian rain tree or ficus (yet - but did recently pick up a ficus so we'll see). But I had good success last winter growing a jaboticaba and brush cherry under fluorescents. I used 2 4 foot shop fixtures and 4 F40/T12 bulbs. Two bulbs were ecolux cool white and the other two were ecolux plant-aquarium bulbs. Plants grew strongly all winter. The trick, I think, is getting enough light on the lower parts of the plants. I hung one fixture horizontally and set the height so that the tops of the plants were almost touching the bulbs. I set up the other fixture at an angle so that the sides and lower parts of the plants were well lit. Just had to remember to rotate them every few days to even out the light.

In the past (10+ years ago) I used a 400 watt metal halide fixture to grow orchids. Obviously it uses...400 watts! This type of system provides much more light than the fluorescents, and that was necessary for some of the orchids. It also produced a lot of heat - both the bulb and the separate electronic ballast. I have no idea how much these systems may have changed over the past 10 years.

Chris

Ebbtide wrote:

Sam Ogranaja wrote:I'm curious about this as well. I'm getting ready to set up a Metal Halide system. Sorry, I can't give any info on this. From my research it seems MH is the best way to go, so I'm going to bite the bullet in the next month or so.

Good luck and have a great week!!!
Sam

Does MH use a lot of electricity? How many watts do you need for say 6- 7"-10" ficus plants? Any good brand to recommend? Thanks.

From what I've read MH is the way to go. Closest to the sun's spectrum. I have no idea on the electricity. Hopefully not too bad.

I'll post pics as soon as I have the setup. Coincidentally, I'll be housing 2 BRT's and a ficus.

Have a great week and good luck with your plants!!!!
Sam

If you only have 6 plants and they are small, you dont need a metal halide. You could easily just get 2 48" fixures with "daylight" bulbs and since the trees are similar size you could lower the bulbs right almost on the leaves. I have over 20 large ficus and as a result have been known to hang 18 of the 48" fixures using so much string and extension cords that the whole basement looks like a spiders web, for me a metal halide would be appropriate as one bulb high on the ceiling would broadcast over a large area. with your small collection a couple flourescents would work fine.

Mh is the way to go. Right now I use a 250w 10k bulb for some bromiliads,mangroves and 2 ficus. growth is explosive. Before that I used a 6x39 watt t5ho with individual reflectors amd growth was good too but it seems that Mh get more branching and backbudding then t5ho does. I do have a fan though directed at the Mh because there is heat. I just added a 70w Mh to supplement the sides ill post some pics later of the growth

Giga wrote:Mh is the way to go. Right now I use a 250w 10k bulb for some bromiliads,mangroves and 2 ficus. growth is explosive. Before that I used a 6x39 watt t5ho with individual reflectors amd growth was good too but it seems that Mh get more branching and backbudding then t5ho does. I do have a fan though directed at the Mh because there is heat. I just added a 70w Mh to supplement the sides ill post some pics later of the growth

Thank you for posting this. I think I'm going to go with MH as well because I want the growth to be as strong as possible. One of the raintrees has a pretty wide canopy so I think I'll need either 1 x 400W or 2 x 250W, not sure yet.

It'd be great to see some pictures of your setup.
Have a great weekend!!!
Sam

Id go with 250 x2 because mh is a single point of light, you will get shadows with one 400. Plus a 250 with a small fan in winter is not that big a deal but a 400 puts out a god awful amount of heat

Thanks Giga,

Are you using an electronic or magnetic ballast?

digital electronic ballasts are better these days - much lower power consumption, lower heat produced and they deliver a consistent current to the lamps - helping the bulb life - mh lamps only last about 6 months though of true output (turtle keeping), 9-12 months max for plants, corals etc. Replace after a year maximum. T5 tubes have shifted their true spectrum in 6 months and need replacing for sure.