55"x55" Tent - 1200w Perpetual Grow Journal

This is going to be my Journal for my new grow tent. This will be a perpetual grow as soon as I get my plants up and producing and find some suitable strains to work with. This is not my first grow, but it is my first grow in a tent with so much control over growth factors. In the past I have had cruddy light sources and light reflectors, but this tent will hopefully work out well.

I got my 55" x 55" x 79" tent and most of my supplies for this grow over a few months from HTG Supply as well as some Amazon stores. The tent as very easy to assemble and put up - 1 person job and I am right at 6 feet tall.

Here are my current supplies:
- tent (55" x 55" x 79" tall)
- 3 x 400 watt HPS lights with magnetic ballast (all 3 with open-air Maxwing reflectors)
- 1 box fan
- 5 gallon buckets for flowering stage pots
- solo cups for seedlings or clones
- All organic light blend soil (no pieces of bark; mix that is airy yet still allows water retention)
- all organic amendments listed in Subcool "Super Soil" recipe
- 6" inline 435CFM centrifugal fan (with speed controller) Intake
- 8" duct fan (supposedly 300 CFM, but I estimate ~180CFM) Exhaust
- Advanced Nutrients



My water source is just tap water out of the faucet. I checked it once and it was around 220ppm or so. However I let it sit out for a good 30 hours before using it on my plants or mixing it with any nutrients. I am using all organic amendments according to Subcool's Super Soil recipe. The bottom half of each 5 gallon bucket gets Super Soil and the top half is just normal light organic soil. I water with Advanced Nutrients SensiZym, Voodoo Juice, Tarantula, and Carbo Load on day 1, day 7, and day 14 of flowering (pure water in between these waterings). On week 4 (28 days) I add about 4 tablespoons/Liter of dried bat guano and mix it thoroughly with my water and let it sit for a good 2-3 hours with some oxygen stones pumping through the water to aerate it. I also add 2ml/L of Nirvana. Every 2 weeks until the last 2 weeks of flowering, I will throw in a tablespoon of 50% humic acid/50% kelp to keep the micronutrients in check. The last 1.5-2 weeks I use only pure water----usually I go buy Ozarka brand pure spring bottled water for the final flush period instead of using tap water.
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This is the list of my upgrades coming soon:

- another 6" 435CFM fan
- 3 air coolable fixtures for the 400 watt lights....definitely need to be bigger than these Maxwing reflectors that I have at the moment
- An area to sprout/clone & pre-vegetate plants
- upgrade the crappy box fan inside the tent to 2 rotating fans to help air circulate over the whole canopy as well as underneath



My next post will be of the plants I am putting in the tent

Here are some pictures of what the tent looks like inside with 4 plants added all in 5 gallon pots. I'm sorry for not having any Vegetative stage pictures for these plants. Just got a camera about 2 weeks back and these are the pictures from Sunday March 11 which is day 14 of flowering for all 4 of these plants.

The 4 strains I have in the tent are TGA Vortex, TGA The Third Dimension (3D), Greenhouse Big Bang, and Greenhouse El Nino. In the 3rd picture which is zoomed out, front left is El nino; front right is 3D, back right is Big Bang, and back left is Vortex. Note that right now since my tent is not full I am only using 2 of my 3 x 400 watt lights. This is also due to heat at the moment.

I will try to update with pictures every Sunday night ****PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SUGGEST/COMMENT AND POST IN MY JOURNAL!!!!!!!!!!!!******


Day 14 Flowering - March 11

I just got through ordering some stuff that will help me make this more of a perpetual grow. Since the 55 x 55 tent is my Flowering (12/12) tent, I decided to buy a "Mother Keeper" tent off of htgsupply.com just for my vegging plants and mothers as well as any clones I may produce. I also have on hand a 4 bulb T5 fixture which will fit well within my new Mother Keeper Tent (51.5" wide x 22.5" deep x 48.5" tall). Ended up getting just an 8" duct fan to mount on top of the mother keeper tent for ventilation.....t5's don't produce that much heat

Also, I was lucky enough to order from the Attitude Seed Bank during their 5 year anniversary birthday celebration and picked up some great deals!!!! Ended up starting 6 new seeds 3 days ago on March 13:

4 x Greenhouse Green-o-Matic Automatic (Feminized)
1 x Reserva Privada OG Kush #18 (Feminized)
1 x TGA Pandora's Box (Regular)

They all popped within 24 hours of each other.... had 3 greenhouse and OG pop on the 15th and 1 greenhouse and TGA pop on 16th (today)

Nothing too fancy with the pictures I'll be sure to post some good pictures once my Mother Keeper tent gets in! And stay tuned every Sunday night for more pictures of the 55 x 55 flowering setup! ***PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT AND SUBSCRIBE ***

So....a few updates this past week for my whole setup---I purchased the following (all should be here by next Sunday's update)--

-- Mother Keeper tent (51.5" Wide x 22.5" Deep x 48.5" Tall) - for my sprout/veggie and mother plant setup. This will have a 4 foot 4 tube T5 fixture with two warm color bulbs and two cool color bulbs.
-- 8" Duct Fan (~200-250CFM) for exhaust ventilation of the Mother Keeper tent

-- 6" ValuLine Centrifugal Inline fan (435CFM) along with a speed controller. This is going to go along with the 6" Valuline i have already in my 55x55 tent. One will be for exhaust and one for intake.
-- 2 x Airflow Reflector with 6" flange. I couldn't afford the 3rd one, so I am keeping one fan in the open air MaxWing fixture, but the two other 400 watt lights are getting transferred to the Airflows and getting vented with the exhaust 6" inline fan.
-- 10 x 5Gallon Phat Sacks I won't be able to use these on the 4 flowering plants obviously, but once the baby plants get more mature they will be going in these "breathable" pots/sacks



Anyway, what you all came to see...the pictures

I went ahead and turned on my 3rd light because 3D and Vortex and VERY large plants compared to both Greenhouse plants which are more Indica dominant. Anyway, Vortex has a 400watt and 3D has its own 400watt while both greenhouse plants share a 400watt. Happy 80F temp so far with open air fixtures. Can't wait til the Airflow fixtures get here so I can drop temps down to the mid 70's.




2nd and 3rd pic is 3D, 5th and 6th pic is Vortex, 7th pic is Greenhouse Big Bang, 8th pic is El Nino
Day 22 Flowering in tent​

Well last night was the first night with the second 6" inline...both are same brand and same 435CFM rating. I got the same fan controller on both of em right now, but soon i will have a fan controller for each. I'm prolly gonna end up putting a splitter on my intake fan so that it doesn't just blast that one corner like you said. Right now its not a problem, because I don't have a plant in that one corner where the air is blasting, but soon I will. I was thinking of getting a 6" to 2x 4" splitter so i can hoist that intake 6" inline fan up high with some ratchets and just have two 4" vents coming down opposite sides of the wall for better airflow on both sides of the tent. With both inline fans going half speed and a box fan inside the tent going half speed, outside temp was 78 and inside was also 78....powerful ass fans hahaha.




Anyway, today I got some goodies in from HTGSupply. Will get pictures of the Mother Tent up on Sunday's weekly picture update! Can't install these Airflow reflectors yet because my ratchets are coming in a different order off Amazon.....plus im not gonna fire them up until I get my 2 Lumatek ballasts (along with Lumatek digital 400watt HPS bulbs) that I decided to get to upgrade 2 of my 3 magnetic ballasts with to make things a bit cooler and more efficiently as well as save about 50-100 watts on power usage......


- Mother Keeper Tent
- 2 x Airflow Reflector
- 5 gallon phat sacks
- 8" Duct Fan (for Mother Keeper airflow)

**** From now on, I will refer to the 55"W x 55"D x 79"H tent as the "Big Tent" and the smaller 51.5"W x 22.5"D x 48.5"H as "Mother Keeper" *****


I got my Mother Keeper set up easily within about 15 minutes this past Friday. It was easy to put my 4bulb x 4feet T5 light fixture in this tent. For ventilation I keep the vents open on the bottom with a inline duct fan that does around 225-250CFM on top for exhaust which goes into my attic. I also have a small clip-on fan in a bottom corner that blows towards the little plants and mostly is aimed towards the light bulbs to keep them cool. I keep the fixture 2-3" above my seedlings. Now that they are rooted I have seen nice growth, and I will be transplanting them within the next week into bigger containers.




In the Big Tent, I have noticed nice bud formation this past week. Stretch is done finally for both Vortex and 3D. El Nino and Big Bang didn't stretch too much and they stayed really bushy. You can tell they have more Indica influence while both TGA strains show more Sativa with lanky stems. I've been fairly diligent on training all 4 plants to try and maximize harvest.


You will notice that I now have one of the Airflow fixtures in the tent. I absolutely love this fixture because it maximizes the 400watt light area while still providing plenty lumens per inch. My light meter shows great lumen output in the whole area that the fixture takes up (2 feet x 20"). Unfortunately, my other fixture arrived with broken glass I contacted htgsupply but since it was the weekend I haven't heard back yet. I'm hoping to get that replaced by next Sunday's update




Anyway, what you all have been waiting for...pictures...

Day 28 Flowering / Day 10 Seedling
IMG1374 - Vortex; IMG1354 - El Nino; IMG1346 - 3D; IMG1323 - Big Bang
In IMG1387: front left Vortex, front right El Nino, back right 3D, back left Big Bang

This week I focused on the seedlings a little more, readying me some new soil for the upcoming transplant for the babies. I ended up finding a good price on some organic soil about 3-4 weeks back from a local nursery and got 8 bags for right at 50 bucks with tax. 4 bags went towards the Super Soil (Subcool) and the other 4 were left as is. After mixing up the super soil according to Subcool's recipe about 2 weeks ago, it was ready for planting. This time around, instead of using 5 gallon buckets, I am using 5 gallon felt grow bags that supposedly allow more oxygen to get to the roots. We will see with time how they compare to the 5 gallon buckets.


The seedlings were transplanted on day 15 of their life above ground. Pandora's Box, OG #18, and the healthiest looking Green-o-Matic plant were transplanted to 5 gallon felt grow bags, and the other 3 Green-o-Matic were transplanted to 2 gallon pots. In their new pots/bags, the 6 seedlings barley fit in my Mother Keeper. However, I plan on giving away two of my Green-o-Matic seedlings soon to a close friend which will open up some space.


As for the Flowering tent, my tempered glass for the Airflow reflector just shipped out and should be here by the 4th or so. Temperatures have not become an issue yet, although I have completely given up any hope that we will have temperatures below 70 again until October now (damn where the hell was our Spring????). The high temperature during flowering is about 80 and that is just with one light being air cooled so far. The buds on all 4 plants are packing on weight nicely now! I am gonna have to get me some fishing line to tie up 3D's long branches because of the explosion of bud I am seeing formed every day.


One last note before the pictures...I am hoping to have all 4 of the plants in the Flowering Tent done by the end of April, so I will be popping 3 more seeds here in the next day or so....keeping it perpetual




Day 35 Flowering / Day 17 Seedling
1396jpg-Big Bang; 1413-3D; 1431&1437- El Nino; 1454-Vortex
In mother keeper, big pots are labeled, all small pots are Green-o-Matic

Looking real fresh my man!

Very nice! Love the organics, bet they ll taste great!

Thanks for dropping by Yep, to tell you the truth, in the past I have used nasty Miracle Gro "organic potting soil" but thankfully my local nursery started picking up an all natural organic blend that has peat, perlite, 5% worm castings, and coco coir in it....pretty loose blend that is airy. No huge chunks of bark like miracle gro.....and no damn grass seeds like miracle gro either!!! Can't wait to get some results at the end of the month from this tent grow since this is my first time using a tent.

Oh, and please excuse the mess inside my Flowering tent....I am going to mount that 6" inline fan and the hose high up off the floor once I get my 2nd Airflow reflector installed. Intake fan will pump cooler outside air at the floor level of the tent, while the 6" inline exhaust fan will be mounted on the top of the tent, pulling the hot air through the 2 Airflow reflectors, once both are installed. That will only leave 1 open air 400watt and as soon as the end of this month hits, I will have all 3 aircooled.

Yea I agree mg is crap for our plants, hows the footprint of them airflows w 400s if u dont mind me askin.

MIKENGROW024 said:

hows the footprint of them airflows w 400s if u dont mind me askin.

Click to expand...

Those Airflow's are amazing and HUGE....they have such great light dispersal even with my new 400 watt Lumatek digital ballasts (I have them turned all the way up to 400 "high lumens plus" which gives them more like 430 watts or so....). They put out just about no heat even within about 4 inches of the glass lens...but I am running one 6" inline as exhaust (sucking the heat through the two lights) for the 2 Airflow; fans at a little more than half the fan speed. I have them about 10" from the bud tops to get the best light dispersal. I use a light meter....my readings, taken 12" below the light---2" below the main bud tops---right below the light is in the 6500-7500 lumen range, and the side buds that stretch about 4-6 inches past the reaches of the Airflow's massive 24" x 20" footprint are getting 4000 lumens (also taken at the same 12" below the light). But the only plants I have that produce side buds that long are 3D and Vortex, which are both quite branchy/leggy. Both El Nino and Big Bang are getting a good full 6500-7500 lumens because they both fit right below one and quarter of another of the 400 watt lights and are getting full light on all bud sites....


4 of those airflow fixtures in the tent would be overkill, but im gonna try to put another one in within the next couple of months to make it 3 Airflows.... the temperatures are GREAT now. Been 68F outside my tent during my lights on and 72F is the max it gets inside the tent right under the middle of the 3 lights at tops of buds. During my lights off, my temperatures are 68-71F. Glad to have a cool start to April!!!


Oh man, but i can't describe it in words...so here is a few pictures, LOL Little teaser before the usual Sunday upload!!!
I added 3 new babies inside the Flowering tent....all of them Green-o-Matic. Two of them in 2 gallon and one in a 5 gallon phat sack.

This is Day 40 of Flowering for the big 4 that have been in here the longest...and obviously you don't see any flowers forming on the Greenhouse green-o-matic plants yet....

1481.jpg-part of Vortex; 1479-3D; 1476- El Nino; 1475-Big Bang; 1473- all 3 are green-o-matic

Oh, but to directly answer your question I would say with the Airflow and a 400 watt light going 430watts, you will get a good usable footprint of about 32" x 28".....that's with the light 10" from bud tops. If you ratchet it up another 2-3 inches you would get more coverage, but less lumens per square inch, so less dense buds.....

thanks for the great(scientific) info on them airflows, sounds like what I need.
Ur plants are looking awesome btw, have u grown the green o matics before? Do the auto plants have the potentcy of photoperiod ones? Anyway jst ramblin, thanks

hahaha no problem I am just kinda learning about light requirements for the first time in depth.....

The only Autoflowering plants I have grown before are Dinafem RoadRunner (I'd rate it 6.5/10 potency), La Diva (5.8/10), and Lowryder Diesel Ryder (7.5/10). I basically saw the Green-o-Matics and figured I'd try them because they were on sale at the time for only $30 for 5 feminized seeds. Plus, the Greenhouse genetics I have chosen so far seem to be producing a good quantity of bud while not taking up a large amount of growtent space. And I also saw some nice Youtube videos of 60-65 day grows of Green-o-Matic and i was impressed

You are basically cutting out around 25-35 days of vegging stage growth.....yet sacrificing yield obviously. I am used to seeing around 3-4 ounces per normal photoperiod plant, so we will see how the Green-o-Matics do with 1 month less time.

Thanks for keeping up! I am glad I'm not just talking to myself hahahaha

I moved all of the Green-o-Matic plants to my Flowering tent where they are getting 12/12. I know autoflowering plants yield best under 18/6 or even 24hours, but I believe that 12 hours HID light is better than 18 or 24hours CFL.

I planted 3 new seeds 2 days ago: Serious seeds AK-47 (hasn't sprouted yet), TGA seeds The Flav (hasn't sprouted yet), and DNA genetics Cataract Kush (sprouted above soil surface but hasn't lost seed hull yet). We will see how they do. I am using different soil and it seems to be more compact, which I found out after I had planted the seeds :\

OG #18 and Pandora's Box are coming along nicely in the Mother Keeper tent. They are now at day 22 vegetative under 18/6 -- 20,000 lumens of T5 light. As soon as I harvest 3D (around the 22nd or so I am thinking) I will be moving OG #18 and Pandora's Box into the Flowering Tent.


Here's a look at everything Thanks everybody for stopping by---leave some comments!!!!!


Day 42 Flowering/Day 22 Vegging
1495.jpg-Vortex; 1501-3D; 1508-El Nino; 1521-Big Bang; 1526- All 4 are Green-o-Matic

Man u must b in the land of the free! Lol ur genetics are awesome, im in the depressed south, haha, all ur babies look great!! great job!! Other than the 400s we grow almost opposite, im in hempys, sog, w floranova bloom lucas style, but when I get a better understandin of soil, Im def goin organic. I jst wanted to give a lil info on mine, keep rockin it, ur plants are very happy!

lol I wish man. I'm in the south as well, otherwise I would be doing this in a greenhouse or outdoors hahahaha. I envy Californians who can grow in their backyard

Do u try to have live microbes in ur soil? Or is it sterile like perlite? I read where u said it was sterile soil but didnt kno if u mayb added mycorizzae (prob spelled wrong) btw that stuff is awesome for transplant stress, lowes sells small bags for about $8. Ahh the south, so ur used to using ac n dehumidifiers, the humididity is as tricky as cooling here, they veg great tho, lol

The last soil I used I know for sure did not have any microbes to begin with because I was having to sterilize both with sunlight (during summer months) and the oven (during winter) because i was having problems with damn grass seeds coming up in my pots. This new soil im using I doubt has any added since it doesn't specifically say it does, but I am adding Advanced Nutrients Tarantula and Voodoo Juice during Veg and first 2 weeks of flowering. You can REALLY tell the difference in growth rates between no microbes and tons of microbes....especially if you let your plants go a little too long without water. They seem to hold up way longer to stress with microbes in the soil.

Hahaha yea humidity is the biggest problem. You really gotta watch Indica dominant plants with tight internodes like the two Greenhouse varieties i currently have....i haven't had bud rot in about 3 years now...knocking on wood. The good thing is its super hard to screw up on taking clones in this humid south air, unless fungus sets in lol.