Poor mans DIY Indagro potoon setup

I run an 8 bulb Quantum BB. I am in midflower. I had one ZM Flora on each side. The rest are UVL Red Suns + ONE UVL 660.

On 3/20 I replaced one WavePoint Coral Wave with a Quantum Flower bulb (to think I game them a bad wrap in the beginning)

5 days later (just prior to reading this) observed much better bud development on bulbs 1-4, so I just swapped out the other ZM Flora

It's only my second flower using the ZMs, so I doubt they have lost too much output.

5:30, I looked at my lights and realized I misspoke.

The ZM FS is on the good side, so I reinstalled the other FS, but this time I put it in #7; 7/8 were both UVL RedLifes I believe the reason why 5-8 was not doing as well was a lack of green-yellow-red

Do you guys think 360 watts of 5000k induction will be enough for veg in my setup?
So far the only 2 circuit timer I found is a Intermatic digital and they start at $150.

hyroot said:

Capt I don't know if you care about noise from the timer. Brinks mechanical make a buzz sound. If you sleep in the same room , it can be annoying. The hydrofarm ones are quiet. The only thing that sucks is the hydrofarm ones cost $20 each. The brinks ones are $5.


Chaz , zoo med flora suns hit every peak. Have more 660 than anything. They have uvb too. You can run those alone with with good results. They cost $15 each. Aquarium T5 bulbs only seem to last 8 months to a year. I hit 1 gpw with those and redsuns on an 8 bulb. Im almost thinking of throwing them back up. Its hot in the valley.

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Yup. Just the digital timer issues to work out and he should be good to go.

Do you guys think 360 watts of 5000k induction will be enough for veg in my setup?

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IMO 360 watts @ veg for this size area should be more than enough.

Transplanted the clones into some 4 1/2" pots today.I got them for free and they were in really bad shape.I wasn't sure if three out of the four were going to survive.One of them is small but I'm hoping it will perk up.

So what are you looking at for the total on this "poormans" pontoon, from the sounds it is getting up there, but idk what you have spent or need to acquire yet for this to be fully functioning. Hope it works out for ya, plants are not totally fried yet mine looked way worse this time alone and came back. Keep it green
EDIT: my bad, you said awhile back 600, just forgot though . Is that with the on/off switch for the pfr lights out or does that still have to be added in to the total?

I believe he said he still has to add a digital timer for the 730's to run for 10 min at lights out. I'm guessing he'll have somewhere around $800-900 into this when he's all set not factoring the time he's got into it.

My thought with going circular on the induction lamp was he's not going to get the area coverage of a 420 and he's dropping the induction lamp wattage to 360 with the overall wattage of his setup being still more than the 420-pontoon combined. Based on the extra 100+ watts he's pulling maybe it outperforms the inda-gro for a bit less $$ which I believe is the goal here. We shall see.

I'm a rookie on a very tight budget and didn't set out to copy the indagro pontoon setup but ended up with it. I only have room to grow in my cabinet and started out with a 8 bulb 4' T5 HO fixture. But I don't have air conditioning and didn't like the summer time temps and the idea of buying new bulbs every year for the T5's. I came across a great price on the induction and it was the Bulb and ballast only so I could mount the ballast outside the cabinet for better temps and had no bulbs to replace for years. The induction was 5000k so I thought it was worth it to add more red for flower. I already had a two bulb T5 and plenty of bulbs so all I needed was another two bulb T5 fixture to add the red I wanted. I had been following threads on the flower initiator and when Indagro started testing the pontoons I decided to add the 730 nm. So here I am almost a year later from when I started with my current setup.The next step is to replace the flower T5's with LED.

Im all for DIY when on a budget. I watched a video of a lady making the most perfect 2lb ribeye steak with a sous vide machine and a blow torch. I dont want to drop 500 bones on one of these, but can make something very similar for around 75.

Meds for my lady on the other hand...

She was using around $300 of meds a month. If I can grow 6oz in 4 months from a light that cost 700 and 200-300 on power and nutes (I really have no idea how much this cost me), the next 4 months only cost me 200-300. Way better than the 1200 it was costing us, and I dont have to worry about replacing anything.
It took me awhile in life to learn you, for the most part, get what you pay for. I pay for less headaches alot of the time if i can afford it. My priority is quality meds that I know where they came from and how they where grown, not steaks.

Bottom line, you make priorities on how you spend your money. Everyone has there own and, unfortunately, some people think that everyone else should have theirs.

Well I thought I should do a update because I had so many problems that I almost forgot about this thread. Recovering from my illness had left me without much energy and the clones I got were in such bad shape that they were stunted and not growing along with a couple other problems.I finally just gave three of them to a friend and kept just one to keep the strain and my friend gave me 4 nice healthy blueberry skunks clones. While this was going on I built another small cabinet for the last LSD I had and started my "flowering with cree bulbs" thread. So there were some changes to the induction, T5 setup because of all this. I'm using the flower initiator in the other small cabinet with the LSD but plan on getting another for this cabinet. I added 4 Cree 9.5 watt 2700k bulbs for lower lighting. So it's now 360 watts 5000k induction,108 watts 630 T5,108 watts 660 T5 and 38 watts of 2700k Cree LED bulbs. The blueberry skunks were mainlined to 8 and are at day 50 now with 12 to 16 inch colas. Wish I could have gotten another 730 nm light for the BB S's but I will for the next run. They look like they love the setup as is,but the 730 would have made a noticeable difference I think.

Cap'n. I am so pleased to see that the hybrid light solution has worked well for you.

In our on phone discussions I know that you have found less costly ways to implement the concepts and it has worked well, proving the validity of the whole ball of wax. As you know, along with the Flower Initiator 730nm far red, now offer a E-Effect 50 Red Booster, with deep red 660nm and 680nm 50/50, to stimulate both Chlorophyll A & B trigger points and to simulate the Emerson effect too. Of course the Pfr Pontoon combo is an easy way to get solid next level results, with increased quality and yields.

They are looking very fine!

Day 54,I put the Cree cabinet in the dark till Monday when I chop so I moved the 730 nm flood to this cabinet and we'll see if it plumps um up a bit.