First Time Grow Problems

Please take a picture with the LED off and use a regular light or the camera flash. It's very hard for people to correctly diagnose your problem without normal light.

 

no

 

stop overthinking it. your plant got put into new soil with lots of fresh nutrients, giving it nute burn. let your soil FULLY dry out and give a heavy watering

 

You can pretty much do anything light wise while they are in veg including flashes or anything else and it won't affect them at all. The only thing that will affect them while they're in veg is if they get 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness

 

May I suggest a better light for your next grow. Good luck and welcome.

 

Quantum Boards.

 

Tell me the size of your space, and I will tell you exactly what your options are for Quantum boards. Quantum boards are the absolute best top quality lights you can get, they run the coolest, and they are the most efficient, and the cheapest. Trust me, you don't want anything else. The only thing that compares to the quantum boards is COBs, and they are twice as expensive, and the coverage of COBs is worse.

There are different kinds of LEDs, quantum boards and COBs both penetrate extremely well. That is not a problem at all. They work beautifully in flower, creating just really dense rock hard buds.

 

I am going to recommend that you get a build it yourself version because it's like half the price. At the end of this I will also let you know how you can get pre-built kits if you want to pay double and not put them together yourself. I would not recommend that because these are very easy to put together, and there's plenty of help here on this forum.

Ok. The cheapest and easiest option would be to order the HLG QB132s or QB120s from Amazon. They come in packs of four. You would need eight for a 4x4 for flowering (four for veg). Either one would work, but I prefer the qb132 because they have 12 more diodes per board (Just in case you don't know what diodes are, those are the little LED lights on the boards, the qb132 has 132 of them, and the QB120 has 120 of them). If you get eight boards, that adds up to 96 extra diodes with the QB132s which is essentially an extra board's worth of diodes.

Four QB132s are $133 and four QB120s are $124.

To power the boards you will have to buy drivers separately. They are super easy to wire together, and you do not need to solder anything, they just snap right in the connectors.

If you want to go the cheapest route, you can power each four boards with the LRS-350 drivers. They are only $40 each. You would need two drivers for 8 boards. If you get the QB132s, you would need the LRS-350-36 drivers. With the QB120s, you would need the LRS-350-24 drivers.

You would have to wire the driver to the boards in parallel, which means each positive and negative of each of the four boards would be connected to the positive and negative on the output of the driver.

You would need to get some 18 awg solid core wire, thermostat wire would work just fine. It's pretty cheap on Amazon, or you can take the wire out of an old extension cord. For the input of the driver that connects to the wall outlet, you can use a computer power cable, an old one will do, just cut the female end off, strip the wires and connect them to the input of the driver. Or you can use an old extension cord and cut the female end off of that and do the same thing.

You can just hang these boards without a frame if you want to, trout or catfish steel fishing leaders work beautifully in the holes in the corner of the boards, and you can connect them to ratchet hangers. If you want to make a frame to connect four boards on a frame, you can use some 1 inch aluminum angle like this, it's very cheap:
https://www.onlinemetals.com/merchant.cfm?pid=971&step=4&showunits=inches&id=62&top_cat=60
You would just cut the aluminum with a Sawzall or a hacksaw, and drill holes in it where you need them.

The reason I'm recommending these particular boards is that they are very cheap, they have very nice spread, and they don't require heat sinks which makes them even more inexpensive.

If you want to use dimmable drivers, you will have to pay $85 per driver rather than $40 per driver. In that case you would want the HLG-320H-36A drivers for four QB132s, or the HLG-240H-24A driver for four QB120s.

So here is the breakdown:
Eight QB132s $266
Two LRS-350-36 drivers $80
18 awg solid core wire $15
1" aluminum angle $20
Total: $381

Or

Eight QB120s $248
Two LRS-350-36 drivers $80
18 awg solid core wire $15
1" aluminum angle $20
Total: $364

Alternatively, you can get ready made kits. You can get them from Horticulture Lighting Group, or Growerslights.com. For a 4 x 4 space you will need 30-35 watts per square foot, so 480-560 watts. If you exceed 40 watts per square foot with quantum boards, you might start running into problems associated with too much light. With HPS lights, you need 50 watts per square foot, it's much less with quantum boards and, therefore, your electricity use will be much less.

 

No problem at all. Many people helped me on this forum when I was first trying to figure the quantum boards out, so I like to give back. I also spent about 2 months researching and learning all about quantum boards, and drivers, etc, so I figure if I can just do a post like this and save someone else two months worth of research, it would be a good thing, right? Plus, not only am I helping you, but I could be helping hundreds or even thousands of people that look at this thread in the next few years. A key ingredient to general happiness in life is helping others so I don't focus on myself. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

 

The qb120 and 132 are on amazon. They sell out all the time but come back pretty quickly. The 288 board requires a heatsink and can be run up to 150 watts. The diodes are more concentrated so the coverage is not as good but they work great. You can think of the 288 as TWO qb132/120s because it has 288 diodes, so it's like two QB144s.

One place where you can get a board very similar to the qb132/120 is here:

Atreum 144.2 LED Board, Vegetative Full Spectrum Grow Light Panel, Samsung LM301B

These are better somewhat because they use the latest more efficient 301b diodes. They only come in the 4000k color temp, but that will work just fine for veg and flower. There are some guys on this forum who have very successfully flowered with quantum boards in 4000k.. If you decide to get this one, you can run four of them with the HLG-240H-36A driver, or two of them with the HLG-120H-36A driver.

Alternatively, they have a version of the 288 board which comes with the heatsink:

Atreum 288.2 LED Board, Horticulture Full Spectrum Grow Light Panel, Samsung LM301B

These also use the latest 301b diodes. Also think of these as TWO qb132/120s. They come in 3000k, perfect for flowering. So, in my original quantum board post where I said you would need eight qb132/120s, you can use instead four of these (or four 288s).

You want to run them at approximately 120 watts each, so one board would use the HLG-120H-54A driver, two would use the HLG-240H-54A driver. (Same with the 288 board, they are both 54 volts, hence the "54" at the end of the driver name. The qb132s are 36 volts and the qb120s are 24 volts).

I just realized that in my original post I forgot to talk about color temperature. It's generally accepted knowledge that 4000k and up is more suited for vegging, and 3000k and down is more suited for flowering. My QB132s are in 3500k and they do a wonderful job at both vegging and flowering. If you have a separate veg space and a separate flowering space, I would recommend using the first board that I linked here, in 4000k, for vegging, and then get the second board I linked 3000k for flowering.

If I had to use only one or the other for both vegging and flowering, I would use the first board in 4000k. If you use something in the 2700 or 3000K range for vegging, it will make the plants stretch more and make more space in between the nodes. If you were to veg with say 5000k, your nodes will be super tight and compact. I know some people who have had problems with their plants being too dense and bushy because of that so they have to raise the light up a ways to try to get the plants to stretch some, for taking clones and things like that.

Sounds like a good problem to have, huh?