Greetings GC I'm on my first grow and currently have a 48x48x80 tent. My plants are about 30 days from seed and once I pull the males out and start flowering, I would like to get on the cycle of having new plants vegging while my main harvest is flowering and finishing up. Everything is in a spare room in the basement, I have my main tent setup pretty well using 600w mH/HPS combo setup. There is a framed but unfinished closet in the room. It's the perfect size to squeeze a 48x24x60 tent. My only question is lighting. When I first started vegging my seedlings, I had my mH dimmed to 250W pretty close to the plants. I cranked it to 600W after a few weeks and they seemed to respond pretty well. I thought about throwing T5s into the veg tent but would I be better off getting a separate 250w mH setup in there or going LEDs even? I don't know much about LEDs but if I'm interested in that route to keep temps down. I'm already exhausting my main tent out the window, so I don't want to have to deal with setting up an elaborate intake/exhaust in the veg tent. Was planning on just having a few small fans to circulate air and hopefully keep the temps down enough naturally. Thoughts? Suggestions? If I could budget this on the cheaper end, that would be great. I'm pretty good with electronics and can do some DIY stuff as I've seen a lot of posts about people putting together their own LED setups and such. Cheers
I think 2 qb 120 boards with dimmable drivers would work quite well to veg a 2x4. I think 1 could work well enough but 2 would provide some versatility. Indoor organic
Heya man, I like T5s and I like MH, and I like LEDs and there's lots to be said about each. Learning about LEDs... take your time! Look up Samsung LM301B diodes which are very recent additions to white spectra LEDs. PCB lighting is becoming more popular and here's a quick list for you to check out: Horticulture Lighting Group Shenzhen Meiju Lighting Co. Shenzhen Hansion Technologies Shenzhen R2T Electronic There are newer elite 96 boards too that are being tested by some of the community. Check out the thread here. ps; I use an 800 board in a 2x4 space and will be augmenting it with some more.
I love my t5. Uses little electricity and my plants veg nicely. Or you could go with a couple quantum boards.
Link to the prebuilt kit on amazon, back in stock in days. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B076QDKVDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8 Indoor organic
Found an old pic of 2 in the 2x4. 4k on the left, 3k on the right. I was super skeptical of LEDs after trying Mars but quantums are the real deal. Indoor organic
I mean for veg' Chillindylan, I know they perform, but I also know what my T5s and MH pumped out. For flower I like the PCB lighting. For vegn', idk,... see'n current growth of my plants... still on the fence.
Do you think one HLG100 would suffice instead of two boards? Supposedly that one is equivalent to 200w mH. Or maybe look into buying boards and a power supply separately and building my own? Seems pretty easy.
I have a feeling I may eventually rip out the HPS out of the flowering tent and go with LEDs in the future lol. But I'm also curious how a mix of lighting will do for the plants starting in veg with LED and flowering with HPS.
Hey flickyourbic & Chillindylan, check out this video. I think maybe this is why my offset view. My PCB lighting works for veg, but I use 2700k primarily and have been getting shorter, stout, plants with them, but after watching this, I can relate. I might just add a few more blue lights during veg.
This is what I'm thinking about doing for the veg tent.. I commented asking if this would work for a 4x2 tent and that's what it was built for in the video. Think it would be overkill for veg tent or just right? I don't think this would be enough to flower my 4x4, so I want to build it to stay in the veg tent and later down the road build a setup for the flowering tent with maybe 8 boards and 2 drivers or something. The tent will be here Monday. I'll get that setup and I probably won't be flipping to flowering for another 2-3 weeks so I have time to figure the lights out. It looks like this setup can be built for around $200 more or less so I'm pretty intrigued. Would be pretty dope to have my veg tent setup for less than $300 or so.
Same setup I have for flowering. I have 12- qb120’s in my 4x4 for about 750 watts. At about 14” above the plants Im at 1000 ppfd and it’s even across the canopy. Soil2Coco’s Indoor Multi Strain Journal
Depends on budget and how long you're going to keep this setup. If its just for a bit CMH will be cheaper to entry and it can always be used somewhere else. If you're going to keep this setup for a year or more I'd invest in LED. QBs will do the job. LED T5 from home depot will do alright too if you're going cheap. Because the space needs less efficiencies aren't as critical. Or make 2 tents that seed to flower and alternate them. Then you don't have to move plants and you can experiment more.
I already have a 4x4 that I flower in with HPS. I ended up sticking a mixed spectrum QB LM651C board in my new 4x2 veg tent with a meanwell 120 driver. New batch of plants seem to be liking it so far. Debating if I'm going to throw another QB in there or not. I eventually want to upgrade the bloom tent and do like 8 QB120s or something so I can get closer to 1000w equivalent since I only have 600w HPS right now. If I'm going to switch to LED all around I gotta make sure it's an upgrade as well lol. Ultimately I might upgrade to a 5x5 tent and QBs at the same time and try to sell my old 4x4 and hps setup as a kit. But that is a way down the road when I have the money. For now I'm planning on getting 3-4 harvests out of the HPS before I look at upgrading.