artificial lighting for cacti. what type do you use?

[SirLSD]

just after other peoples experiences with indoor cacti growing. do you use hps, mh, fluoro? what wattage? what area does it cover? how close to the light are the cacti? etc etc

also do you just grow them indoors over winter or all year round?

its getting cold outside and am thinking of moving some cacti indoors.

[Rev]

all cacti seem to like artificial light

HPS or fluoros ive used

its good for seed trays

but they really like sunlight best. the growth rates and healthy appearnce is so much better with sun

i would try and buid a greenhouse or sunroom before going fully indoors.

even if you can get a bit of sun supplemented with lights

ive had 4 foot flouros 2 x 40W lying alomost flat with the trays and no probs

once they get a bit bigger HPS is no problem either - but further away so they dont cook

be careful reacclimatig them in spring as they sunburn more easily if not sun hardened

[Gunter]

I have used anything I could for so long I have used more than I want to mention.

Right now I have seedlings and cuttings under 2 150W HPS lights with about 30 cm between them, the cacti are about 45 cm beneath the lights.

The plants grow well but thinner under the HPS, than they would if I supplimented it or used MH, however since I plant high density seedling flats the slightly thinner growth works out to my advantage. They still grow well.

I think air circulation can help a lot, even during the dark period.

Edited April 17, 2006 by Archaea

[SaBReT00tH]

I'm trying to germinate lophs, ariocarpus and bridgesiis and am wondering if it's a good idea to turn the light and heatmat on at night. I thought this it would be warmer during the day and thus maintain the 15 degree minimum when the lights and heatmat are off during the day (fooling the seeds into thinking it's night time). I'm using 2 x 2 foot long (18Watts per tube) flurobay which is about 30cms above the cacti seeds. which are in turn on a heatmat, with a tea towel over the top (to stop it getting too hot), with a temperature of 25 degrees celcius at the moment. The seedlings are in a 50% coarse sand/50% cocoa coir mix in clear takeaway containers and were sterilised using a microwave, with the seed later having a few sprinkles of fine sand on top and misted water. Does this sound okay? I'd like to try and increase my bottom heat to 26 - 29 degrees but I find if I take the tea towel off from underneath the temp gets up to 30 degrees or so which is too hot.

[Gunter]

Sounds just fine for germination and early growth.