scrap micro grow with ccfl

Hey man, its just a baby, give it some time before you judge yourself as a grower.
It would be interesting which lights exactly u are using, seems like its not enough if the plant strechtches like this.
You got my sub anyways, lets See how this turns out
Greetz

 

Looking great Caterpie! You will need some LST very soon if she will continue stretching so fast. 
Also be carefull with overwatering (see my topic to see why) 
\nOffcourse I'm subbed on this one and will follow your updates daily 
(Ps: I attached a picture of Caterdle  )

 

Aside the whole Buck Pokémon family sucks, you should consider putting some books under your pot to reduce the distance between light and your plant.

 

It's a first grow, you'll make mistakes. Don't sweat it.
They're remarkably resilient plants. All the  fancy tech and tricks are to maximize yield and quality when growing in conditions FAR inferior to a proper season outdoor grow.

I'll throw the light science around if you want, but the reason plants grow best (veg) under "cool" light (blue wavelength heavy) is blue wavelegths are shorter wavelengths, therefore higher energy.
Higher energy means it converts nutes to sugars more quickly, so the plants are able to grow faster and fuller....think "growing kid and high energy foods"...or "why a teenage boy will eat two large pizzas, come home and have a 15 ounce steak, a full cup of mashed potatoes with butter and sour cream, 4 cups of juice or milk, a LARGE slice of cake, and bitch about being hungry 2 hours later".

Your aquarium lamps will work passably, but not WELL. After all, they're designed for the health of tropical aquatic plants and fish, and our plants are tropical or desert, which have similar lighting conditions.

But OmegaKA is right about "closer to the lights".

If you want he reasons, I'll give them, but the basics are light fall off is a function of the square of the distance from the source. A 1600 lumen (a 23/100) CFL delivers only 4.9 lumens to the leaves of a plant from 18 inches away. Sunlight delivers 128,000 lumens. A 400 watt HID only delivers 98 lumens at 18 inches.

Sunlight's energy. The analogy I gave with "a growing teenage boy" applies. The closer to the bulb you can get while still getting coverage, without getting burn, the more energy the plant gets for growing or blooming.

So you have to balance between coverage, wavelengths needed, intensity (lumens), amount of DIRECT light in that coverage (lose energy in reflection), and heat.

While covering any shortcomings in each source/system you use, as best you can.

 

euuuuh....hard to answer.

Ideally, a grow box is a help. But my very fist "can I do this, and is it enough fun to be worth investing in a ton of gear?" plant was grown in a 10" by 10" by 6" soil pot from the gardening section in my office under a ceiling fixture mounted (normal can light, just replaced the stock incandescent with a "grow bulb" one) and a hanging 26 watt LED spot...
 
I had to fight like hell to keep it under 18" height, and about the same diameter, before flowering, in my office, which has no reflective qualities, textured walls (bad refraction), and is a "cream yellow" color. I vegged it for 3 months is part of why I had to fight it...but I got 3/4 an ounce of smokeable, but not really quality bud from it (about street trash quality, nowhere NEAR dispensary quality--it got you high, and didn't taste bad, but that's about all you could say for it).

So it CAN be done in the shittiest, most ridiculous conditions possible. The plants are a lot hardier than people like to make them sound.

But if you want quality yield, even if quantity doesn't matter, you want a space you can control, so you can do your best to mimic what nature would give them. No matter how you try, they'll NEVER get what they get from an outdoor grow, indoors (which is why control of conditions indoors is so important...if you have to compromise in one area, at least you can give it "perfect" conditions in another to make up for it).

To maximize quality AND quantity for your conditions, you want them to have as close as possible to natural conditions in EVERY way. The closer you get to this, the happier and healthier the plants will be.

 

You can better add the pictures as attachments (Go to More Reply Options, and then add an attachment)
There is not a lot of difference between growing in or outside a box in your situation because you have no reflection on the walls.
 
Do you have more information about the light schedule you are using? Just 12/12 from start to keep them small?

 

18/6 or 24/0 (or anywhere in between) is bandied about as ideal for veg. True and false. Most plants trigger into flowering as soon as they can under 12/12 (as soon as sexually mature enough), but this isn't ALWAYS true. After all, these babies grow great in tropical latitudes, and those latitudes are pretty much 12/12 year around, or close enough. You have to be at 45 north or south to get 18/6 average at peak season (about Seattle, WA).

BUT, again, you're dealing with light intensity, there....at tropical latitudes, there is more light intensity. The 128,000 lux/lumens reaching the plant is a global AVERAGE daytime, though that's pretty close to what you get daylight anywhere on the globe. Sun'd just plain too far away for any global level difference is distance from it to have truly significant impact.

You'll never match that intensity no matter what you try, so the longer light cycle in vegging delivers more energy. Energy plus nutrients plus water equals sugar, sugar equals energy in the plant, just like it does for us.

So going for a longer light cycle, so long as you can manage heat, and AREN'T delivering TOO MUCH UVA/UVB, creating a "sunburn" means the plants get more energy to put into vegging out.

 

I've been screwing up, dropping an aspect of my math, on lights...don't use the numbers I've been dropping, I missed a very important step.

The relative facts are the same...watt for watt, HIDs put out MUCH more intense light, but the scale of difference is not at the level I was using.
 
Actual figure, 20 CFL "100 watt" bulbs are what it takes at 12 inches to match the intensity of a 400 watt HID at 24 inches.

I put up an accurate table here, along with an apology to w0rm, who I had been arguing with about it.

 

Looking great Caterpie!
Also some possible upgrades: reflective walls, air intake, thermometer/hygrometer, carbon filter

 

Great idea to upgrade the box! If you need some materials (from china ) you know where to find me. I would suggest to not use the CCFL as I have read better stories about 5W led bulbs. Maybe you can mount one vertical to support side lightning, but a normal 5W CFL or 5W led would be better.
(You can use the CCFL to grow mushrooms, they are great for that purpose) 

 

Lol funny grow. I'm subbing and one of the reasons I am is because you're partners in crime with Weedle hahahahaha