k so this is my new 08 grow, 400 watt hps light foxfarm soil box is 23" by 4' by 4' 8 plants mostly purple kush here are some pics the first one is with the growlight on the second is with it off does anyone have any ideas on how i han improve my setup or what type of nutes you use with soil yourselves.
Your setup looks good guy, proper lighting, good area, how far away is your light? And for fert i use Orchid Plus 20-14-13 solution really good shit, how often do you water your plants? There kinda drooping.
If you look closely to the plant in the first pic, far left, botton row, that stem is streching for the light move it closer.
8 plants under a 400w wont be enought light rule of thumb is 100w per plant so you might want to pick up another hps light or suplement it with alot of cfls .ways you can improve ur set up would be with a cool tube because they get hot i have a 400w in one of those workforce storage cab's from hd wich is 6'x21/2' and my temps get pretty high like 90F and that is with a cool tube but i am still working on it so no plants in it.. nutes i am using are foxfarm grow big,big bloom and tiger bloom and my medium is worm castings mixed with perilite.. i do not kno what kind of ventilation system you have in that cab but with any hps light you need good ventilation a cool tube with a blower fan to keep it cool would be best and some computer fans for intake and exhaust to exchange air and a circulation fan to strengthen your plants stems to simulate wind another thing to do is buy white paint or mylar to help reflect more light to the plants i will try and get pictures up but for some reason they wont upload
aight forshure thats some good comments, i water about every day or two, the enclosure is 4 feet, so the light is about 2 feet from the pots, yeah that one plant is kinda growing different not too shure why its streching the temp is pretty high mabe 80 degrees i dont have a meter yet yeah does anyone have A ballpark on one of those cool tubes because i have about $200 to spend o yeah for ventilation i am running a kind of weird setup, there are holes on the far side of the enclosure (by the big plant) and a 110 volt 223 cfm and a 12volt computer fan for the exhaust which makes the air flow over/through the plants and is exited out the back of the cabinet. in pretty stoked that i can barely hear it running fans, and my hps ballast so i would be reluctant to add a fan, but if i get a cooltube that would be way more chill because i think its cooking my plants, i think that one really bushy plant is an indica, the reast are purple kush sativas, they are not doinh as well as the indica... all the plants were started and vegged together under the same conditions..
o yeah i did painted the walls flat white im thinking of flowering them now because the cabinet is so small what do you guys think
yeah i dont understand where they get the notion that i need 100 watts per plant the plantswould be complety fried under that kind of power even if you coud keep the heat down. moving the ballast outside is a really good idea
ya i woud say just clean it up to reduce the risk of a fire or something. (i.e.) integrate the chords and timers and the ballast on the outside of the box. the sativas are going to want super specific temps and humidity to thrive.
as it says above im am using a competer fan and a 110 volt fan for exhaust only hps creates a lot of heat
k well made some changes, been really busy here are some new pics of how everything is doing they all really filled out once i started using a grow nute solution. killed 2 males of the purp kush they pretty much all look the same now exept for the 2 on the left.. pretty happy with everything exept for the smell of the things, trying to put a carbon filter on my exhaust fan.. here are the pics
loooking goood =) im using a 400 hps in a box that is bout 9' tall 2' wide and 1.5' deep (im just tryna grow 2 nice plants at a time) and i am worried about heat............. maybe i shouldnt be o so much. if the visibility of the box isnt a problem... build somthing nice for yourself.
yeah my box is actually buried completely underground in a hole i dug with a shovel what i do for heat is use a big fan, run at night so its cooler and i have inlets for air under the plant canopy at the bottom and the exhaust at the top so air moves through the plants.
I dunno about 8, but I'm growing 6 plants with a 400 watter in a space similar to yours. 22"x32" and it's like 6 feet tall. They're doing fine, light penetration leaves a little to be desired but I might just prune the bottom of the plants.
yeah im sure theres way too many plants in there, but ironically i just added three more, might have too take some out they are getting huge and my box is looking smaller every day, here are some current pics. added two deep water culture buckets, i want to see how fast they will grow using floranova grow and bloom, a little over fert on some leaves but it makes the plants grow like crazy. added a carbon scrubber to the exhaust too, o and moved the ballast outside, there was no room inside thats for sure you can see my hommade reflector in the one pic, its just sheet aluminum, i made it because i have two reflectors but they are huge and dont fit..
Mines even more crowded man, I'll attach a photo. The one in the rear right is getting removed tomorrow 'cuz it's got balls on it now. I think its a hermie, so I might buy some more CFL's and put it in a different closet on its own and just cut off the balls as they grow. Or I might just trash it. But anyway, if your box gets really packed, just concentrate on growing the tops. Prune away the bottom if light penetration is bad and just have like a SOG of topped plants. No lower branches means the plant will focus all of its flowering on growing the huge top colas. That's what I was gonna do, but I decided against it now that I have to remove a plant, I think I can re-arrange them a bit and have a little more light penetration. Edit: Ahh fak. Can't find the pics right now, but if you look at my most recent threads you'll see 'em there. Can't re-upload 'em here either.
My 3x3x5 grow cab gets up to the mid-90s with the MH on and no ventilation. The HPS feels much hotter than the MH did. Your box is only 27 cubic feet while mine is 45. If you have half of the amount of space, you'll have even more temp issues than I did (I only know it gets that hot because I ran it all before planting anything, with the fans going it gets to 80* at most). I would DEFINITELY work on getting some ventilation in there and test running the system before you have plants that will get fried. also, GET A THERMOMETER. they aren't that damn expensive!!
I don't have a thermometer either haha. I just run a fan in there, it doesn't really get too hot. Maybe 80 degrees. I open up the closet doors every now and then and the ceiling fan in the room my closet is located in pushes the colder air into the grow box/closet. I leave the window open a little bit to keep the temperatures in the room a bit colder than the rest of my apartment. Best I can do. I don't even hav e 5 bucks to go get a thermometer.
yeah ive been watching the temp its staying at 80 degrees dont know the cfm on my fan but its most likely around 200 the humidity is at 40 percent so yeah i might ubgrade from a 6 in fan to a 8 in or something because its feeling kinda warm, thanks for the input guys..