Hey AlB.Fuct how much do you yeild every 2 weeks and how tall are your plants when you start to clower them?
about 1.5lb every 2 weeks, when all is going well- my latest batch isn't going to touch that because I stuffed up the pH, but the batch behind it looks like it will hit the 23oz/23plants mark.
Plants are the same height (bout 200-230mm, 8-9") when going into the flowering area as they were when I cut them and stuck them in the clone box. The clonebox is not intended to veg the clones- only has some fluoros, intended only to convince the clones that it is daylight for 18+h/day.
SoG is all about zero veg time post the clones setting root. This is how we get short plants, literally growing the top cola
only of a plant grown by natural means. Once the clones have a good spray of roots, they go in pots of media in the flowering area.
How comes you get up so early Al? growers stress?
Nah, I've had a sleep disorder for yeeeears. I only sleep about 60-90 mins at a time, tops. I get sick of being in bed after about 3-4h.
A question re. mothers: Do you think on an op exactly half this size you could make similar size clones using a 250w HPS? I'm thinking that you probably can't and that you would need a 400w in order to get the mums to he required size witin the time period? Also what size are the pots that your mums are in? I was thinking 8" pots would be enough.
I think I could probably run my 10 mums with a 250. Haven't tried it tho. However, I'm VERY confident that you could easily run half the number of mums I do with a 250.
All my plants are in 175mm pots.
alrighty then al, i was too much of a noob and bought a 2500.00 cool cab
ouch.
For that kind of money, you could have come very close to duplicating my entire op, with 2x 1000HPS and a 400 for mums. I think it would cost about $3K to rebuild my op with all new parts.
what i want to do is use the cloning chamber on top of the cab and take the dwc res out and use the bottom to grow my mums under the 400w mh or i could take the cool tube out of the cab and use it for my flowering chanber and put some 4 footers in the corners of the cab for the mums , then i could use both the 400's mh/hps over my flood and drain tables. i read waaaay earlier in this thread the with sog i can fit 4 plants per sq ft so then i could concievably buy 1 2x4 table for table 1 and 2 since both are 1400 ppm then use 2 2x2's with their own reserviours so i can treat "tank 3" with that pk stuff...i cant recall the name but it's written down.
It's Canna's 'PK-13-14.'
1. do you think i could run the tables in this fashion?
2. the 16sq ft says 800w for the lights, can i combine both the mh/hps in the flower area? if not i will have to buy 2 cool tubes and 2 400w ballasts for the area.right now the cool cab is using the cool tube and hps but if you gimme the ok on the tech side im gonna strip that baby and just use it for clone/mums. i only have 2 lines for power to the room now one is a 15amp and the other is 20amp.
When you remember that lumens don't 'add' (for CFLs, HPS or even a dozen flashlights), your answer becomes clear. Given what you have on hand, use your MH for the mums, HPS for flowering plants, fluoros over your clones.
MH is a bit of a waste in flowering. Cannabis flowers in autumn, when the sun is rather low in the sky. The low angle creates a long path through the atmosphere, filtering most blue out of the spectrum. Thus, a red-yellow spectrum is a flowering trigger, along with a 12/12 hour photoperiod. The photoperiod is the main trigger- you could flower with the MH if you didn't have anything else. Buds might come up a bit leafier than I like, tho. HPS gives the best results in flowering because it most closely mimics late autumn sunlight in the subtropical/temperate latitudes where cannabis plants evolved.
My mother area, inclusive of flood tray, tank and clearance for the lights, requires just as much vertical height as my flowering area, a minimum of about 2m (6' and inches). I'm not sure you'll have enough vertical height in the bottom of your coolcab to raise up mums. They get very tall, very fast.
Your lighting equipment should be labelled with the current draw in amps as well as the power consumption in watts. Add up the amps to make sure that what you have on a ckt doesn't exceed 80% of the breaker rating.
If it's not labelled, you can figure a 400W HPS or MH will draw about 460W. Divide that by your line voltage and you get the current in watts. If on 120V, a 400 (which actually pulls about 460W from the AC mains) will draw 460W/120V=3.87 amps. On 240v, it's 460W/240V=1.91A. You're not going to be stressing your 15 & 20A ckts too much with a couple of 400s.
each 2x2 will have 16 plants in then and i will put the batwing reflector on the cool tube/s.
the 4 footers are flouro's by the way.
cant find flytocel but have plenty of hydroton and was wondering if i cant find floc could i crush up some cubes for the bottom of the pots.
Yeah, that'd probably work- but I don't know why you want floc in the pot bottoms if you are using pellets. The purpose of the floc in my application is to keep Fytocell crumbs from escaping the pots' drain holes and to reduce the buoyancy of pots filled with Fytocell. You have neither concern with pellets. I guess it might provide a barrier against gnats entering your rootballs via the drain holes.
i think you told me to squeeze 2 600s and the 1000 over the whole 4x8 area. which is probably still a good idea but the electrical i have under control right now without blowing breakers and shit
hm, OK.
What you have going will keep you pretty busy.
The two 600's will have a better coverage area.. but it is really dependent on the room design.
Agreed, except cooltubes allow 1000s to be run a lot closer to plants, closing up the lumens/m^2 gap between uncooled 600s and 1000s. Someone along the line in this thread (I can't find it
) calculated that a cooled 1000 can lay down some 80K lumens per m^2 or something wacked out like that at a 350mm spacing.
A pair of 600s will draw about 1310W, a 1000 will draw about 1105W. At 15c/kWh, the pair of 600s will cost $10.38/mo more to run than a single 1000. In a 4-tray system, where a 600 is used over each tray, the difference of course doubles to an added $20.76/mo.
2620W for 4x 600 vs 2210W for 2x 1000 makes a difference for 240V growers who may only have access to a 10A circuit. 2620W is JUST over 10A on 240V (2400W). 2210 is just under.
Up to you! I think 600s over each table would give great results, but the pair of 1000s over 4 has served me pretty well, too.
