red and blue cfls

[donaldf973]

i was just curious if red and/or blue cfl bulbs could be used for lighting a scrubber. while searching for spectral graphs for these bulbs i couldn't find anything but i went thru some pot/grow forums along with some garden forums and noticed they are having success with adding these bulbs as supplemental and as the only light source.


anyone think it'll work for scrubbers too?

[kerry]

They have tried the tube type colored bulbs withnot any real results. I would assume this is not going to work either. Keep with what works. The 2300K is tried and true!!!! And the LEDS are showing great promise to.

[Ace25]

The problem with "colored CFLs" is they are usually just colored glass with regular white phosphors inside, so all your really doing it cutting out the majority of the spectrum/intensity of the CFL if your only allowing a certain spectrum to make it out. Red CFLs, as they are made now, are a terrible idea because you just end up wasting the majority of the electricity to run them, ie. a 24w red CFL really puts out about 5w worth of light. Here is a quote from one of the MJ forums:


My array has a mix of 5000k / 3500k / 2700k bulbs, with several additional 23w red CFLs mixed in as well. The red doesn't put out much light, but I feel it better pumps up the red spectrum.

The problem with that persons thinking is a white CFL is going to put out the SAME red spectrum, you just won't notice it as much but it is still there, plus you get the rest of the spectrum to go along with it (which most of it is unusable for our needs anyway, but not all of it is unusable).

[donaldf973]

understandable. thanks for the insight