Light is Essential
Flowering plants need plenty of the right kinds of light to grow and bloom. They mainly use two parts of the sunlight spectrum for photosynthesis (making sugar out of air and water!). Light with more of the blue part of the spectrum, sometimes called cool light, fuels the vegetative growth of roots, green stems, and leaves. Light with more of the red part of the spectrum, sometimes called warm light, is used to signal flowering as well as to provide energy for photosynthesis.
The modern fluorescent technology in your BloomInLight, in the form of high output T5 lamps provides these needed red and blue light spectra. Your BloomInLight comes with both red balanced and blue balanced full spectrum tubes. Supplementary switches give you the option of turning some lights off if desired.
The intensity of the light for fluorescent tubes is greatest at the center of the tubes, dropping off a little at the ends. Similarly, plants that are directly below a tube get the most light, but the design of the reflectors in the BloomInLight hoods provides balanced coverage for plants away from the center.
It's often recommended that grow lights be positioned only inches above growing plants. This is because light intensity drops rapidly as the distance from the light increases. For example if you halve the distance the lights are from the plants, the intensity of the light increases fourfold. Positioning the lights close to the plants is not as critical with the BloomInLight because of the high output lamps in our light hood. You can position the lights a little higher and enjoy watching your plants flourish, rather than looking at the top of a light fixture.
The lights that are included with your BloomInLight are rated to last 20,000 hours. That's nearly four years if you keep the lights on 14 hours a day. While all fluorescent lights have a drop off in their light intensity as they get older, the T5 lamps in your BloomInLight are expected to maintain 95% of their original intensity at 8000 hours and drop only slightly more as time goes on.
The tubes are easy to remove and replace. To maintain the best growing environment we recommend that you replace the lamps every 4-5 seed-to-flower cycles.