Sade's indoor adventures

You’re smart! Doing everything right from the get go. Excellent lighting, good tent size, and starting off with a few plants versus a whole tent full. I’m on my first grow too. What I’m coming to appreciate is how much work a single plant is. They are each their own creature and need a lot of love and nurturing to thrive, in my limited experience.

Best wishes to you!

 

Parallel two on each driver. It's slightly more expensive then more simple wire methods. I think you might have seen my pictures before. I've posted them a bunch but the way I wired mine in parallel on that driver makes both the driver and the boards modular. You can unplug them and move them around. You can add a third to the setup for $99 later. It's all ready.

After I set mine up I later wanted to build a frame to get them closer to the top of the tent for my tall plant. All I did was unplug them and build the frame with the boards/heatsinks in my garage then plugged them back in after I hung it back up. I was glad to have those instead of fighting trying to get wires out of connectors of cutting the output wires and resplicing. As you can see my output cord on the driver has 3 plugs and I'm only using 2 so I could add a third board to this setup with very little cost. It would simply split the available current from the driver evenly between the boards in parallel no matter how many boards you hook to it. With 3 it will run them a little over 115 watts or so each. Better spread and able to run a closer light distance with better penetration.

 

You'll have to splice the output of the driver longer and split it to two wires so you'll want some type of splice. There's many ways to do it. Lever wago connectors are very easy to work with if you have some around. Wire nuts or crimp connectors also work fine.

On the input of the driver all you really need is a wall plug but you could make the cord a little longer. It's only a few feet long from the factory. I just put a plug on the end and located the drivers on the wall near a power strip/surge protector. Saves work not splicing the input when you don't have to. A plug end adapter for 120v wall plug will have screw terminals for the wires inside so you won't need a splice.

 

Good choice!

Here’s what I have going on under mine. S

 

I just used red wire on a few of my lights and put a black sharpie mark on the negative side. Pretty easy to keep track of which is which and I only bought one roll of wire.

You can also do my extension cord method like in the pictures makes it all modular so you can unplug the lights or driver.

 

Got a tip from a long time grower here a while ago when I grew DWC and it was a great one. I use an aeroponic cloner. If you let the roots get nice and long before moving to the DWC bucket you can drill a 5/8" hole in the bottom of the net pot and fish the roots through the hole when you transplant.

You have roots in the nutrients day1 in the buckets and there is no delay in the growth of the plant. They take off from there. It probably removes at least a week out of the veg wait time in DWC.

 

I hope you are also using a silica supplement like GH's Armor Si. It makes the stems way stronger.

 

Silica has to be added to the nutrient mix first and it's alkaline so you need slightly more ph down when using it. If it's not added first it can bond with other hydro nutrients and drop out of the solution as a solid molecule.

 

Silica, humic/fulvic acid, kelp extract, root microbes, sugar/carb, and enzyme supplements are the categories of supplements besides NPK that work well and have been proven to have growth benefits. I run a supplement in each of those categories when I grow though I switch supplements and try different brands.