perpetual grow tent *ideas*

First off you can get much higher quality gear for about the same price from other internet sellers, htg stuff is low quality. Try google shopping just watch shipping costs.
a few i buy from
Hydroponics | Hydroponic Supplies
Greners.com - Discount Garden Supplies. Hydroponics, Grow Tents, Grow Lights. - Greners.com
The Hydro Source - Hydroponics Experts, Leaders in Environmentally Friendly Hydroponics
Grow Lights, Grow Bulbs and Hydroponics - Plantlighting Hydroponics & Grow Lights

not a big fan of led's but some people like them

i veg with t-5 s, 600's are a good choice for flower, get a good hood, cheap hoods dont refract light evenly.

 

The thing about led's they don't even come close to the yield from a hps, it is not uncommon for experienced growers to get a gram a watt from hps.

With a led you would need to get 2-3 grams a watt to meet the claims of the manufactures and nobody does that, the best I have ever seen is 1.5 gpw and that is rare.

The claim leds create no heat is also not true, they don't create radiant heat from the front but the heatsinks on the back create a lot of heat, so you still need a large fan to remove hot air.

But some people love them, guess it depends on your goals.

 

For a 600w ballast I would get a dimmable (quantium, galaxy, lumatek or phantom) so I could use a 400 metal halide for veg. On another forum someone did a test of hoods and found the best to be the super sun 2 and the second the hydrofarm radiant.

Cap valueline fans are the cheapest, but there are several good inexpensive fans out there, for a carbon scrubber local grow shops are usually better because of shipping costs.

A fan controller is also a good investment, a cheap dial type or a variable speed temp control like this mercury 3 or cap vsc

 

If you're going to use an HPS inside a tent it is highly recommend you get a Cool Tube HPS fixture because it gets hot inside any and all tents fast.



If you're going to go LED I'd buy a HydroGrow LED over an HTG LED all day, and I say this because of this science project video. Check it out

Hydroponic tomatoes Part 1 - Hydro Grow vs HTG vs Generic


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjhGTh7Msvc[/ame]

As far as fan's go, if you get an HPS light it will need it's own fan (usually), as well as fans for the tents. A 6 inch inline fan (Vortex = more $$, Valueline = less $$) for the tents should do.



You can have the inline fan as the main exhaust for the tents, meanwhile you can rig up a PC fan + ducting to exhaust from one tent to the other tent that is connected to the inline exhaust fan. The flower tent should have the main exhaust attached to it while the veg/clone tent has the PC fan as it's exhaust. The negative pressure created by the inline fan and PC fan means you won't need any intake fans. You'll also need some sort of speed control for your fan. Most people go with this,


But that control ^ can and will make your fan(s) create an annoying "hum". To avoid that hum I use a 3 Amp Variac Variable Transformer,



And of course you're not done yet. You need an activated charcoal filter to scrub that sweet sweet MJ odor. Mountain Air is my fav, but there are others, but don't go too cheap on your filters.

 

You could buy the lumatek from htg for $234 or from someonelse like:
lumatek 600 w for $150 and a supersun 2 for $80.

the htg reflectors give the worst light footprint of any reflector

a hydrofarm 6" fan for less than the $100 htg fan

for hps bulbs ushio, digilux, lumatek, eye horti, are all good, for a mh home depot has them for $27

Im not endorcing that site, if you live on the east coast they have best shipping rates, if you live closer to the west you can find similar prices from a cali based store.