VFT lighting requirements?

Im trying to setup a growing station indoors and I was wondering how many lumens would be required by VFT's to grow healthily.I was considering using 4 shop lights suspended above a 4 ft by 4ft area using a total of eight 40 watt cool white fluorescent lights producing approx. 12480 lumens in that area.Or would I have to go with a MH bulb of at least 400 watts creating approx 40,000 lumens.Any advice would be of great help.Thank you.

Hello,

That sounds more than adequate; you can start by having the tops of the traps off the lights about 6-8 inches and that may be perfect; if not adjust shelf or whatever up or down an inch or two at a time until all varieties seem happy.

Make sure you warm your plants up to the light level if they are not used to high light. Otherwise, sounds great. The more light the better so long as the transistion is slow and they have plenty of water. (I lost some plantlets from light shock last year, be proticularly carefull when helping them adapt. In my case the light just caused mild burn, but an infection took advanatage of it and killed the poor things)

Thanks for the advice guys.

Would it be ok to start VFT seedlings from seed and other CP seedlings from seed under this lighting level?