First Time Grow: Fluoro Light Problem?

Hey Sincycle,

Get as much fluoro light in there as you can, bright white for veg stage and warm white for flowering.

Living with your parents sounds like the biggest problem here - remember you're going to have to hide your plants from them for 3-4 months, have lights and fans on for hours at a time and towards the end (depending on the strain) a cupboard that stinks of grass.......

There's been a couple of guys on here already whose parents (even one guys grandmother) have busted them. Maybe worth thinking about before you commit yourself.........

Best of luck if you do decide to go ahead, hope all works out for you........
You'll get all the advice you need on GrassCity........just ask.

Happy growing ..............

Polski.

 

I thought the same thing, and I bought one a couple weeks ago. They totally, completely, suck hairy balls. I wish I had a dig camera to show you my veg room, you can see the one Brightstick next to a bunch of 28 watt compact flourescents, even though the brightstick is 33 watts the amount light it puts out of awful. I can't even tell when it's on unless I look at the thing. I mean shit, even my 13 watt compact flouros put out 800 lumens and my 40 watt 4' bulbs put out 3000+ lumens (so if they were 2' they'd put out about 1500+lumens, I think). Plus you can't replace the bulbs (easily) AND they are $20! The 13 watt bulb that outperforms it is less than a dollar ($0.77). So my recommendation is to avoid the brightstick at all costs (which ironically is the least bright bulb in my entire house).

EDIT: Wonder where all the watts go if the Brightstick is so dim? Heat. That fucker is the hottest running floro bulb I've ever seen. I can hold the compact floros and the big strip lights, but this one heats up the plastic and itself quite a bit. GE really should be ashamed of themselves for making the overpriced piece of crap. Unfortunatly for me, it was the only floro light fixture that the little hardware shop had, or I probably would have found a cheaper, better fixture and bulb.

 

I'm getting some distilled water for germination, a few styrofoam cups to plant in until the plants get larger. I'm going to plant maybe 4-6 of them so I have a better chance at getting a female plant. (I don't really know how to tell the difference between a male or female though, so is there anything I need to know about that? Or how to make it turn female?)

The formula I've seen, and I think it's pretty accurate, is that 10 seeds will give you 3 budded plants. In this theory, about 2 of the seeds fail to geminate. An additional 2 fail to break through the soil after you put the 8 cracked seeds into their cups, which gives you 6 plants. Then half of them turn out male. So you have 3 living female plants. That's just a general guideline, you may have a better gemenation rate and maybe none will die after you transplant the seed to soil. But then you might end up with 7 males. So you never really know, although if you're starting from seed I'd plant more than 6 if you want 2 or 3 good, healthy females (oh yeah, and even though you might have more than 3 females survive if you planted 10 seeds, some will grow "better" (faster, healthier) than other and you will probably want to kill the weak females if you're tight on space).

I can't get 48' bulbs because I won't be able to fit them in the cabinet, but I didn't see any bulbs with higher watts/lumens/Kelvin than that.

You can find 2 foot flouro light fixtures. With lumens and watts, the higher the better. However, with Kelvin it's different, you actually want a specific number. I won't go into "light theory" but in general the higher the kelvin number, the "warmer" the light is (soft, red end of the spectrum), and the lower the number the "colder" the light is (harsher, other end of the spectrum). Different people have different opinions, but I've always gone with a mixture of warm and cold lights and not had a problem.

I've also got a power surge to plug everything into in case there's any power accidents. I have an old power supply from a computer case that I was going to use to connect 2 computer fans to inside the cabinet for ventilation. Just gonna install all that inside and drill some holes for the fans to vent out. (Should I have both fans facing in, or one out, one in?)

This is a good idea, I did this in my veg box. If you feel like messing around with wires, you can buy a power supply (think like those black boxes that plug into the wall, and then plug into your cell phone or any other electronic that doesn't take electricity directly from the wall outlet, like this: ). However, you have to read the panel on the power adapter and make sure it's the right kind, I only found one around my house (I have a box of extra ones of all kinds) that converted to DC and not AC. The fans I used said 12V DC, .16 amps. The power adapter I spliced it to was only 5.5V, 400milliamps, so the fan runs slower I think but it still pulls a lot of air and I don't need to plug in a big computer power supply. Just something to think about if you're into electronics, if not a computer power supply will work fine although it will produce considerable heat on it's own. Oh yeah, and you can have one going in and one going out, or you can have them both going out. Either will work although I would choose based on their placement. If both fans are close to each other I'd point them both out, but if they are on opposite sides of the box I'd have one going out and one pulling in.

You seem like you've read up on growing, which is great. I recommend using whatever methods you want *cough* to download marijuana growing videos from the internet. There are so many out there. I recommend one that's made by "Mr Green" if you can find it.

Will this work at all? I'm not looking to get the absolute best plants I can, I figured if I can grow 2 or 3 inside that cabinet and they don't get diseased or die I'll be cool, but any help would be appreciated. What do you think?

If set it up right, keep the tempurature down (95F and the plant dies), and keep your parents from getting in it for a few months (not to mention the smell... it varies and it's not repugnant but it is noticable) then you should be fine. Once you get a plant going it can be pretty hard to kill.

 

Yeah, my grow box is about 1 - 2 plant size, and one computer fan for intake does it all, my box stays below 80F usually