Light green seedlings

[MechaniMan]

Man-o-man. Don't ever assume you know something. Seedling started to get really bright green and I'm pretty sure they were getting bleached. I built a fixture and the light bulbs that came with it I assumed was he 175 watt or so metal halide. I decided to do some readings off of the fixture and with my ballast at 60% I was getting 120 volts at 3 amps. Turns out that bulb is a 500 watt metal halide. That could have ended bad.

They are considerably lighter in color than they appear in the pictures.

Hot tip - grow your cannabis in cat treats, they will turn out purrrrrrfect.

But on a more serious note I have a question, should I assume that this is actually a 500 watt bulb or is that what the ballast is putting out and it is over driving the bulb?

 

[MechaniMan]

Funny part is that my bulb is coated. Most high wattage MH are clear. GE makes a 400 watt coated MH. I think I'm over driving the bulb.

At 60% I read 90 PPFD at about 20 inches and 160 PPFD at full power. So there is no way possible that this thing could truly be driven at around 300 watts at 60%. I would have a much higher ppfd reading. For instance with the 600 watt HPS that I have I get a reading of 750 to 800 ppfd at around 20 in. Something just doesn't add up.