Hi there!

This is my first grow and even if I tried my best to learn about growing through this forum, books, etc. I need the input from expert to confirm if everything is all right.

I built an indoor garden with one room 4x9x12 for seedlings/ vegetative and another room 8x9x12 for flowering. Ceilings are 12 feet high. Both room are equipped with intake ventilation with 6" fan 250 cfm. Another venting system take care of the extraction through 2 inline fans 250 cfm, ozone and carbon filter. Both room are sealed for air and light. Structure is framed and sheered with OSB on both side. The walls are painted with flat white. The garden has its own electric subpanel with a 50amp power supplly through a GFI breaker from the main panel and with 2@20Amp circuits for the light and 2@15Amp for ventilation and accessories. Ballasts are only 5.3 Amp so I have plenty of room for future expansion with possibility to switch to 240V.

The vegging room has a 600W MH light, digital ballast and quadra reflector 24x24 located in the centre of the room and T5x6 fixture installed above a shelf for seedlings and clones, both light fixture are on a timer. The quadra is installed with a pulley to allow height adjustment.

The flowering room is equipped with two wide reflectors 22x24, each with a 600W HPS bulb. Both reflectors are height adjustable and vented.

Crops are on rolling beds 18" high

Any comment?

Now comes the real world, a friend helped me with the startup inventory with 17 clones that quite frankly were in pretty bad shape. Plants were infested with spider mites and stressed. The medium was poor and most plants had a funny chemical smell, yellow leaves, weak stem and poor root system. We cleaned everything, transplanted the plants in organic soil from Roots Organic. With a 24/7 light regime and in less than 10 days, plants developed well growing from an average of 30cm to 40cm and up to 55 cm for a couple sativa. Stems are now robust and foliage has a 200% or more growth. Recidivist spider mites were treated successfully with neem oil. Temperatures oscilate from 68ºF at night to 85ºF during the day, moisture was very low and I introduced an humidificator that keeps the moisture in the mid 40's. At this time, exterior hygro is generally in the low 30's if not less, temps are mid 40's at night and mid 70's during the day.

After a week I also started to feed the plants with the "recipe for success" from technaflora. I observed some claws on the indicas and decided to stop the feed. Leaves were dark green, the medium fresh and I suspected a Nitrogen overdose but according books and posts it could be a million other things. Is my reflector too high? is my temp too high? do I need more CO2 even if I have an air intake? Am I overwatering? should I resume the feed? Check out the picture and comment, please! Yellow leaves at the bottom are old. A question, is the claws on the leaves (curling downward) a result of the stomata closing?

To keep air circulating, I installed a fan in the room which also dries the plants, generally in the morning the medium surface is dry up to 1 1/2" and I have been watering the plants everyday with 250ml, ph 6.0 purified and deiodonized water. I also mist the plants in the afternoon with the same water. According my 4 ways analyser, the medium has an average of 6.8 ph and ppms and moisture are low. For some reason I do not trust that meter ... comments? I have been told that weighting the plants is a good way to evaluate moisture, any comment?

On the side, I germinated 9 WW seeds that seem to do pretty good, they are under 4 T5 with a 16/8 regime of light.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post and please, suggestions welcome!

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Do you mean 18/6 ?

I would lower the reflector about 1 1/2 - 2 feet it it were me. Kinda hard to gauge the distance in the pics..It looks like you can get the plants closer together if needed after lowering the light.

Thanks for your input. 16/8 light regime is for the seedling only, I put a black box on the trail for 2 hours. The vegging crop is under 18/6 and the distance from the canopy to bulb is now about 30" o.c. except the 6 starters. Is it safe to bring the bulb a 1 1/2 feet away from the canopy. knowing the reflector is not vented?

Thanks

How far away is it from the top of the plants now? If you can put your on top of your plants and its not hot or "overly" warm it will be fine..I'd bring it as low as possiblw while still covering the outer plants.

It was about 2 feet from the Sativa (second from left) and about 30" from the center. Now the distance from the canopy in the center is about 18", the temp at the sensor raised to 85ºF with a 46% moisture. Is 85ºF a max? the overall temp of the room is about 82ºF. Thanks

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I'd prolly leave it where its at then, lol.