Hi. First post and first ever grow. Lately I've been a bit fed up with dealers and have always loved the idea of growing my own to have access to top shelf herb. Since switching to vaporizers, my needs are modest. This will be purely for personal use by myself, roommate, girlfriend occasionally and anyone else who drops by. Over the last few nights I've been researching, reading every article and forum post on growing that catches my eye. I'm planning a small cabinet grow and would really appreciate thoughts and suggestions. The cabinet will be a 18"(w)x18"(d)x36"(h) single door cupboard. I'm ordering it from a cheap flatpack kitchen cabinet place. I was originally going to just go with an old cabinet from ebay or something but haven't found anything suitable in my area lately and this can be made to whatever measurements I want. Down the track I might add a second cabinet to have one each for veg and flower and two shorter cabs for supplies / mums and clones. If I get a logical combination of sizes it should make the whole operation flexible enough to fit into a different space when I eventually move. This thing has to remain stealthy in noise, smell and looks. It's not exactly out in the open but it can't have anything hanging off it and the space it's going into is pretty tight so I can't have fans and stuff mounted on the outside at the back. Because of their combination of low heat, high brightness and cost effectiveness I'm looking at running 220W (4x55W) T5 triphosphor PL-L tubes. I'd rather not have the expense of swapping out different sets of tubes for veg and flower at least on this first run. I believe the trihosphor tubes output a wide spectrum so will probably go for 3000K this time and add something with more blue to help with vegging on the second run. To make the most of the vertical space I'm going to mount a tube vertically in each corner and run a vertical ScROG facing each tube in a diamond pattern with 2-4 plants in the centre of the cab. Will the 4 lights be enough for a cabinet of this size? I've been playing with the idea of making the cabinet a little wider (say 24") and running one or two extra 55W PL-Ls in the centre then doing like a two sided vertical scrog or cage for each plant. Would this work and would it be worth the extra effort and expense? I'll probably just paint the walls, ceiling and floor with matte white paint but will spring for mylar if it's really worth it. I'll have to knock up some kind of reflectors I guess but haven't thought much about that yet. I've got access to sheet metal and a press so it shouldn't be too hard to come up with something. I was planning on placing air intakes in each corner directly below each PL-L using small PVC pipe light traps. If the lights run too hot I'll put the lights inside some of that transparent plastic protective tubing and insert that into the PVC pipe intakes so each light gets its own cool tube. I'll add extra intake holes for the cabinet so the plants get some air on them. In the top of the cabinet there will be an exhaust fan hooked up to a carbon filter. I'm looking at one of those Panasonic Whisper fans because I need to keep the noise down as much as possible while still getting a good amount of airflow. What size fan should I go for? They come in 50, 80 and 110 cfm models. I'm leaning towards the 110 with a fan controller to slow it down. This may be overkill but should give me enough flexibility to add more lights as I need/can afford them. What size carbon filter should I be looking at? The duct on the fan is 4". Do they make scrubbers that small? I could make my own but this is in an apartment and I really can't afford any smells getting out so I'd rater buy a good one if available to be safe. If I do have to DIY can someone point me to a good suitable guide? I've read a few guides and I get the general idea but have no way to judge how big it should be and how much carbon I should use. I don't really want to deal with soil in the apartment and hydroponics has always interested me. This being my first one I'd like to keep it simple so will probably go with hempy buckets this time and look at something more advanced on my second grow if necessary. I still need to do a lot more reading on mediums and nutes so don't know enough to ask questions about that yet. Right now I'm focusing more on getting all the parts together for the cabinet. I'm also organising the seeds now because I'm ordering online I need to allow enough time for them to get here so I'm going to order soon. Also because reading about all the strains that I can't get my hands on locally is keeping me motivated. Having a few strains on hand for different situations sounds great so I'm looking for a nice social sativa for wake and bakes, day times and parties, a relaxing hybrid for hanging out and something with a bit of couchlock for the end of a hard day. Basically a range from sativa through to indica. I think I've decided on ordering from Attitude because of the range, prices and stealth shipping. This is my current shortlist (all feminized): Barney's Farm Vanilla Kush Barney's Farm Tangerine Dream DNA Genetics Chocolope G13 Labs Pineapple Express Dutch Passion Strawberry Cough Please help me narrow this choice down or suggest something else if you think it's a better choice. I'll probably order 3 seeds each of 3-4 types. From 3 seeds I've got a very good chance of at least one germinating right? Hmm. After writing all that, I can see there's a bit of a fruit theme going on there but that isn't intentional. I'm just looking for strains that are reasonably easy to grow, doesn't take forever to flower and is likely to give a good yield in my setup. Named strains can be hard to come by round here these days so I'm also looking for things I haven't had yet. That's why I haven't put any of the more classic strains on the list. I might get a couple of them later so feel free to suggest those too. A big thanks if you've read all this. This community seems great and I'm having a lot of fun learning about all this stuff. I'll probably do a journal once things get off the ground. Peace.