Lights during Veg cycle: 20, 22, 24 hours, any difference?

W

WickedPoseidon

Member
Hey, so I'm just wondering whether having lights on a 20 or 22 hour schedule, as opposed to just keeping them on constantly, is any worse for my plants. I was keeping them on all the time, but I just found out that my power bill is like 700 bucks a month so I'm looking for any way at all to cut costs in that department.

Any advice, anecdotes, suggestion, etc would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
 
mxyz250newb

mxyz250newb

New Member
Theoretically I've heard that 24/0 is bad because it's too much photosynthesis going on and not enough growth stages. I've heard plants will be smaller because of this.

Theoretically from what I've seen 16 hours lights on works really well with 8 hours of root growth and whatnot...
 
thexception

thexception

Well-Known Member
this has been discussed quite a bit lately. well u see the obvious downside of 24/0 or longer light time, & there has not yet been a proven benefit to that kind of a schedule. On the other end an 18/6 save money & gives the plants their needed downtime, much of which is used for growth & intake of nutrients (as oppossed to lights on & intake of light), & this is when most of the growth & spurts occur (dark time). Experts also say that reduced light times of 14-16 hrs. as oppossed to 18 hrs. will help produce more female then male plants. So there you go. And of course it is not worse, for all reason stated, it is obviously BETTER not to run them as u were.
 
W

WickedPoseidon

Member
oh wow, I had no idea but that makes total sense. You guys just saved me a lot of money and probably made my little weed children very happy as well ;)
 
JimmyT

JimmyT

Well-Known Member
18/6 is all the light they'll need. I'd suggest 16/8 if you're using HIDs to veg because of the issues with the bill that you spoke of:leaf:
 
mxyz250newb

mxyz250newb

New Member
i ended up growing a bunch of carrots once with really dry soil from leaving the lights on too long without water... green carrots
 
ItsJohny

ItsJohny

Member
thexception said:
this has been discussed quite a bit lately. well u see the obvious downside of 24/0 or longer light time, & there has not yet been a proven benefit to that kind of a schedule. On the other end an 18/6 save money & gives the plants their needed downtime, much of which is used for growth & intake of nutrients (as oppossed to lights on & intake of light), & this is when most of the growth & spurts occur (dark time). Experts also say that reduced light times of 14-16 hrs. as oppossed to 18 hrs. will help produce more female then male plants. So there you go. And of course it is not worse, for all reason stated, it is obviously BETTER not to run them as u were.
Click to expand...
As they say you learn something new everyday. Ive heard that before about 14 hrs of light will produce more females. Came from a friend with brown eyes thought. So i just figured he was full of shit... Thanks for that bit of info


Peace in the Middle East... :leaf:
 
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