flowering on 6 light / 18 dark question

Ok I've now seen in writing now 2 very well thought of seedbanks that use 6/18 flower with great results. Can the experienced openly discuss please? Pros/cons.... Sounds like a great way to save electricity. I got not problem mentioning my internet reading....Subcool and Elite seedbanks.

you sure it wasn't 18/6 veg cycle? please paste the articles here.

weird ive never heard of that before, Maybe its good, you should leave some pics or links to website's that support this information +rep

I know for a fact about Elite but I am not going to his web site to search for obvious reasons in flower not veg. Very clear on that one....He mentioned it reduces bud growth very little vs electicity bills and used it 100% of the time so his pics. of awesome plants used that way. If you dare search the Elite web site it's in there in a thread someplace where he talks about his growing op?

I saw the comment on a Subcool thread as few days ago but my search has not come up with the person or link. I asked in a Subcool thread for reference help to be determined.

Are you talking about doing 12 hours light with 4 hours dark to get three light cycles in a 48 hour period? Craventes mentiones that in the bible but I can't figure out how to make the timer do it.

6 hours of artificial light is not gonna yield you too good

I heard from an old grower that you could do a 6 on 12 off schedule and would not affect yield much. I think they make digital timers that you can program for each day and have it repeat. So that way you could program everything in accordance to when you needed the lights to come on. First week would go something like this

Day 1 On 12:00am-6am Off 6am-6pm On6pm-12:00am
Day 2 Off 12:00am-12:00pm On 12:00pm-6:00pm Off 6:00-12:00am
Day 3 Off 12:00am-6:00am On 6:00am-12:00pm Off 12:00pm-12:00am
Day 4 On 12:00am-6am Off 6am-6pm On6pm-12:00am
Day 5 Off 12:00am-12:00pm On 12:00pm-6:00pm Off 6:00-12:00am
Day 6 Off 12:00am-6:00am On 6:00am-12:00pm Off 12:00pm-12:00am
Day 7 On 12:00am-6am Off 6am-6pm On6pm-12:00am

If you notice the cycle repeates every 3 full days

In a 7 day period you would have 10 light cycles...does that mean you could take a 60 day plant and finish it in 42???

I would love to see a side by side comparison of the same strain, same lights, same everything except 1 be 12/12 the whole way through, and 1 take on the 6 hours on 12 off approach

interesting!

Wat would be the benefit of depriving your plants of light?

I was told the plants can do everything they need to with only 6 hours. So if they can do their job in 6, why give them 12 is the thought. I am not claiming this as fact, only that an older wiser person than I told me this. You could harvest that much faster, by cycling the lights that way. Hopefully someone will want to try, if I had the space for a separate flower cab I would def cut some clones and try it out. Hopefully someone has tried this before and can let us all know.

Boulderheads said:

I heard from an old grower that you could do a 6 on 12 off schedule and would not affect yield much. I think they make digital timers that you can program for each day and have it repeat. So that way you could program everything in accordance to when you needed the lights to come on. First week would go something like this

Day 1 On 12:00am-6am Off 6am-6pm On6pm-12:00am
Day 2 Off 12:00am-12:00pm On 12:00pm-6:00pm Off 6:00-12:00am
Day 3 Off 12:00am-6:00am On 6:00am-12:00pm Off 12:00pm-12:00am
Day 4 On 12:00am-6am Off 6am-6pm On6pm-12:00am
Day 5 Off 12:00am-12:00pm On 12:00pm-6:00pm Off 6:00-12:00am
Day 6 Off 12:00am-6:00am On 6:00am-12:00pm Off 12:00pm-12:00am
Day 7 On 12:00am-6am Off 6am-6pm On6pm-12:00am

If you notice the cycle repeates every 3 full days

Click to expand...

yea i seen some shit like that before but thats supposed to make it yield more, but also add more time to flowering by a week or 2 from what i read

Gotcha.. you remember where you read that by chance. Not saying you are wrong I would just like to see for myself

I like the discussion that has started. Someone with a larger grow op needs to chim in and help us do a side by side research project on this topic. Marketing research is in effect here......Clearly Seedbanks are using this idea and most likely for less electric cost vs. bud end result take appears to be very good. Maybe they are using 1000 watt grow ops or less? Appears we have a plant that does it's work and a lot of it's work based on dark cycle starting to reproduce vs. die. Such as light grows leaves while dark grows roots and maybe bud? While i understand bigger and better lights produce more and thicker bud there just may be a correlation between how plants grow in the dark part that helps even steven some of the grow cycle. We are dealing with nature here boys/girls so let's open our eyes to the dark cycle part as well in research. I have friends with masters in horticulture that would sure to be a great assistance to the topic as we are dealing with a plant that has same characteristics as reproducing legal annuals/perennials like roses of plants in every garden center like hd or lowes. Getting deep hear but let's explore together. Maybe we are on to a compromise of good bud and half the light cost (great cost in summer) to explore....Help me with this guys...

I'm not scared, I just had the same disccusion over at potpimp. Interesting shit
http://elitegenetics.webs.com/apps/forums/topics/show/958319-how-many-1ks-could-i-run-

Cool!! Yeah I say the more brains we get on this subject the better. It would be beneficial to have someone compare 400w 600w 1000w and possibly even some t5's during flower on the different light cycles. This way we could determine whether it was subject to light intensity. Maybe the plants can only get away with 6 hrs. if 600w or more is used. Maybe it works accross the entire scale. Anyway, I think we need to get some sort of comparison going here. I will be ready to try come november with a 1000.. so if anyone else can help out I say lets make this thing happen, unless someone can validate or deny this claim is even plausible.

Hey Gdaddy, check out the discussion over on that site you listed. He is saying he uses 18 hours off... I wonder if he would think my time schedule would make any difference. The reason that most of us do 12/12 is cuz the plant needs ATLEAST 12 hours of darkness to stay in flower mode. I wonder if elite trimmed his 18 hrs off to 12 hrs off if he would see the increase in yield come back. Maybe my theory is stupid, but I was thinking you might be able to trick the plant into flowering faster....(plants don't read a calendar like we do, they go from lights on to lights off = 1day.... So if you could use my light schedule you could make the plant think 10 days had passed when in reality only 7 human days had passed. Anyways feel free to pick that idea apart.

See a friend of mine tried this a few yeard ago and i don't remember it having any affect on flowering time or quality only the yeild was decreased from the previous 12/12, but it wasn't my operation and I wasn't really involved so maybe I'm wrong and the flowering time was shortened. I know the quality was the same as his other harvests because I bought and smoked plenty of it seemed the same, and i definitely remember him saying he got less than usual but saved a ton on electric so it worked out ok. I don't know it was a while ago and i guess the details are kind of fuzzy.

Anyway I'm definitely interested in it. i've got some going into flowering in about a month under a 1000k and i got DESTROYED by the electric co. last time around, ended up paying around $2000 in just electric by the time I was finished, and didn't recoup anyways near that much. This time i vegged under flouros and am going to start out at 12/12 in flower and knock it back to 10/14 or so after a few weeks. Any less than that makes me a little nervous because I HAVE to come out ahead on $ this time around or I'm fucked, so I'm going to be a little cautious.

Good stuff...For this type experiment you might contact a nut. company like Adv. Nuts. and maybe even Remo and talk to him about your experiment. Ask if they have researched this tool and tieing them in by publicity using their nut line. Positioned correctly they might provide free nuts. on a test like this? Sure they would like the pub. At the end of the day we know using less light hrs is less cost but it's the trade off in how much bud? If the dark cycle is that important maybe not?