Small Grow Tent PC Grow Budget Growing

So this is my 2nd attempt at a full grow from seed. I ordered seeds from Herbiesheadshop.com. I trust them and highly recommend ordering from there if you are a US resident. They have fast, descreet shipping with tracking information included. It comes from the UK, under "Royal Mail" postage. Takes about 7-10 days to get here. You get free seeds with every order, depending on how much you buy. My main goals for this grow are to keep it small, micro and try to get high quality, high yielding plants.
 
 
1. I ordered Ripper Double Glock, Royal Queen Special Kush & Dinafem White widow seeds. Dinafem didn't germinate. But the ripper and royal queen germinated beautifully.
 

 
2. I have a small veg, seed starting chamber which is PC box that i converted. I use 1 40w LED 6500k light bulb for that and use a 24/0 light cycle. This keeps the plants growing shorter and bushier. The PC box is lined with a reflective material that i bought at the sporting goods store which is also used as the Safety, emergency blanket. It keeps heat trapped in from the led/cfl light and keeps veg & cloning temperatures optimal. Also, for the front/opening of the PC box i just taped a sheet of mylar reflective white, which i fold over to keep light sealed. BTW, I use the gorilla tape. It's strong, extra sticky and is overall is great.
 

 


 
 

 
3. As my plants continued to grow in their early vegetative stages, I moved them over to my grow tent which I ordered off of Amazon. The Milliard 30"x18"x36" grow tent is perfect for what I needed and for only $70 it was a good deal. Somewhat easy to assemble and fits right in my closet.



 
4. Continuing veg under LED UFO lights at 18/6. Orignally had 1 50w LED UFO light - ordered from amazon. I then took clones from this mother plant, the "ripper double glock" and successfully rooted them using Schult'z clone/rooting hormone powder. Then i put them in my PC/Clone chamber and 10 days later had successfully rooted clones! I use the pellets, the ones that you add water to and they expand. I've found those to be easier to root clones with over rockwool. The rockwool tends to soften the stems and rot them away. It may be due to the non optimal cloning tempreatures and atmospheric conditions of the PC box. But the pellets/coco seemed to be more forgiving!
 
For my fans and air circulation, i use a PC fan which i converted to run on a 12v power supply. ALso, i purchased a few 5v USB fans from ebay for $6. They are plugged into a USB hub, and then plug that into the apple usb wall adapter. So i can power all my fans from a single power outlet plug. This tends to get hot and is a bit of a safety concern on my behalf, so i'm looking for a better alternative. Overall, those fans do the job. I use 2 for the intake and have one inside blowing air to circulate on the plants.
 
For my output, I use a inline duct fan which i purchased as a combo with a Carbon scrubber/filter. The carbonf
 





 
5. Inside my grow tent I had a few sources of light at this point. My main source of light was the 50w LED light which i placed right smack in the middle of the tent at an optimal height. I had it attached to adjustable height cords so i could easily raise/lower the light. Then, I used a 45w 6500K CFL light, which i got from a photography store. And a 50w 6500k CFL light. These higher Kelvin lights are perfect for the vegetative stage and are the proper approach to take when growing with CFL lights.
 







 
 
6. Later on I realized that the CFL's were good for the time being, but I wanted something that would do a better job. I was also concerned about the heat that the big 45w CFL was emitting and for being on at 18+ hours a day, it wasn't safe. So I purchased a 135w LED UFO light from eBay for $69.99 w/ Free Shipping. This stage is where the light cycle continues at 18/6, but then I like to slowly change it to prep for flowering. I'll get into that process in a little, but I wanted to further describe my setup at this point.
 
The USB fans are very good for air flow. Intake/Outake is good and the outtake fan consists of the 100CFM inline duct fan attached to my carbon filter. The hose out leads to another USB fan on the other side to help pull air through. It's better to pull air through a carbon filter rather than push the air. Also, you need to get the filter as high up to the top of the grow area as possible because heat and odors rise. However, the carbon filter was like 3x bigger than what i had expcted so i have to leave it on the ground. I propped it up on something to raise it up which did help about 30%!
 
To prep for flowering, I take my 18/6 light cycle and change it over the course of a week to 2 weeks. From 18/6 I go to 16/8, then 15/9, 13/11 then 12/12. This helps eliminate stress from quickly changing over to a 12/12 light cycle right away, and also better simulates the actual lighting cycle from the earth. It may be a bit unconventional but I've had no problems with doing that.
 

 

 

compared to a $440 LED light, $1000 cabinet? of course with a name like mr budget you probably split your toilet paper from 2 ply into 1 ply.

 

I saw that on a TV show about America's cheapest people. This one guy took his toilet paper and split the 2 ply into 1 ply so he got 2 rolls of toilet paper from 1 roll! LOL....
 
Anyways, I mean my setup is pretty budget for the best possible equipment. I'm using USB fans which were $5 instead of using more expensive fans... The USB hub was $.99 cents... The lights and the tent were the most expensive, but arguably the most important.
 
The 135W LED UFO light is full spectrum and is definietly much brighter and covers more area than the 50W LED UFO, obviously. My plants are starting to show signs of early flowering and are about 14 day sinto flowering on the 12/12 light cycle. I'll post more pics as the flowering stage progresses!

 

My pc grow box