Grow tents with no light leaks?

Dreminen169 said:

I can honestly say fuck gorilla grow tents & I will never buy another. They are literally built too well lol. At least for my climate & purpose. I can’t run my gorilla grow tent with doors closed like I can with my Mars hydro & Viparspectra tents. I need to run it with the doors wide open, & at night, it keeps in all the humidity and heat even with mad air circulation I needed to buy a huge dehumidifier for the room the tent is in & 2 booster intake fans for night time rH. I never needed any of this for my other tents which mind you work perfect & have had no problems with. Also, I hate the design of the zippers on the gorilla grow tent compared to the others.

The gorilla grow tent light versions probably would suit me better, but again at that point I’m just paying for the name & could get equal quality for a lot less money

Click to expand...

You're blaming a tent for your poor environment control. Makes sense. You need to better exhaust not circulation.

You have multiple intake fans and wonder why it's sucking in humidity? And that you have to run a humidifier in your lung room?

Dreminen169 said:

I can honestly say fuck gorilla grow tents & I will never buy another. They are literally built too well lol. At least for my climate & purpose. I can’t run my gorilla grow tent with doors closed like I can with my Mars hydro & Viparspectra tents. I need to run it with the doors wide open, & at night, it keeps in all the humidity and heat even with mad air circulation I needed to buy a huge dehumidifier for the room the tent is in & 2 booster intake fans for night time rH. I never needed any of this for my other tents which mind you work perfect & have had no problems with. Also, I hate the design of the zippers on the gorilla grow tent compared to the others.

The gorilla grow tent light versions probably would suit me better, but again at that point I’m just paying for the name & could get equal quality for a lot less money

Click to expand...

If you can exhaust the air outside your RH will drop drastically. I bought a giant dehumidifier, but once I added an exhaust outside it's been sitting collecting dust. My RH is actually lower than you'd want. It's less than 10% in my veg tent right now and usually is. I could set that exhaust to turn on and off, but I've just been letting it run 24/7. I have another exhaust that goes in the lung room.

My shitty cheap tent is falling apart. The zippers are about toast. Tons of light leaks too, but I don't flower in it. I have a Mars tent they sent me and a Gorilla. Haven't decided which one I'm gonna try first.

twentyeight.threefive said:

You're blaming a tent for your poor environment control. Makes sense. You need to better exhaust not circulation.

You have multiple intake fans and wonder why it's sucking in humidity? And that you have to run a humidifier in your lung room?

Click to expand...

The reason I put two intake fans is cuz the outside room rH stays between ~40-50% so I figured if I could get more of that air in the tent it would push the high rH out. It did the trick, but yea 2 intakes is not ideal
Also not blaming the tent. Just not ideal for my environment & don’t want to spend thousands on environmental controls for tents. At that point I mine as well just get rid of them and just make it one large room

PadawanWarrior said:

If you can exhaust the air outside your RH will drop drastically. I bought a giant dehumidifier, but once I added an exhaust outside it's been sitting collecting dust. My RH is actually lower than you'd want. It's less than 10% in my veg tent right now and usually is. I could set that exhaust to turn on and off, but I've just been letting it run 24/7. I have another exhaust that goes in the lung room.

My shitty cheap tent is falling apart. The zippers are about toast. Tons of light leaks too, but I don't flower in it. I have a Mars tent they sent me and a Gorilla. Haven't decided which one I'm gonna try first.

Click to expand...

I’ll have to give that a try, just been dreading cutting a hole through the house.
I really like the Mars tent, just wish they made it upzip 270 like the gorilla & viparspectra style tents

Dreminen169 said:

The reason I put two intake fans is cuz the outside room rH stays between ~40-50% so I figured if I could get more of that air in the tent it would push the high rH out. It did the trick, but yea 2 intakes is not ideal


I’ll have to give that a try, just been dreading cutting a hole through the house.
I really like the Mars tent, just wish they made it to upzip 270 like the gorilla & viparspectra style tents

Click to expand...

Well more fans whether intake or exhaust will lower it. I actually have positive pressure in my veg tent, so I have a little more room than the regular 2x4.

Have a goliath. Seems to be a gorilla clone. Happy with the overall tent...a little leak from the main front zipper and the stitching at one reinforcments to an access hole. Sealed the stitching with some black rtv as its easily on hand. Added a couple more velco strips as the leaking zipper flap.

farmingfisherman said:

As far as leaks go I recommend black gorilla duct tape or black gaffing tape. Hell even electrical tape works.

Click to expand...

Black fingernail polish fixed mine where the serial numbers were stitched in

Check out Secret Jardin. I've had my 4x4 for over 10 years and only replaced a zipper.

Unless you have a very unstable strain I wouldn't worry about light leaks that much. I leave my tent open all the time, sometimes with a normal light fixture with a 60w led on during the "night" period about 4-5 feet from the entrance, I've only seen maybe 10 seeds in the 6 years my setup has been the way it is now. Normal day to day lighting in your home shouldn't be strong enough to interrupt their cycle unless it's very close or somewhat high intensity directed towards the tent. Just my 2 cents from experience. Leaking sunlight in general is very bad in my experience however.

That being said you should still strive for a "perfect" environment as much as possible, I don't care who told you what but as long as you provide basic plant nutrition your environment is going to make more of a difference than any bottle of x or soil amendment on top of the benefits of staving most pests off with just good airflow in general, hard for a spore or mite to colonize a leaf that constantly has air moving over it.

Gumdrawp said:

Unless you have a very unstable strain I wouldn't worry about light leaks that much. I leave my tent open all the time, sometimes with a normal light fixture with a 60w led on during the "night" period about 4-5 feet from the entrance

Click to expand...

This is not good advice bro bro. plenty of science behind dark periods and flowering.

madvillian420 said:

This is not good advice bro bro. plenty of science behind dark periods and flowering.

Click to expand...

I'm not advocating for not having a dark period. But rather that a photons intensity from a normal houselight is likely not nearly enough to actually interfere with your plants life cycle especially through a pinhole leak. Light intensity and ability to be photosynthetically efficient are what matter more than a small beam of light that's likely not intense enough to cause your plant to react.


My point wasn't that you should leave a light on 4 feet from the front door of your tent but rather not to worry about light that in 99.5% of cases will not change anything. You think sunlight doesn't reflect off the moons surface and hit your plants outdoors at night, or your garden plants don't adapt to porch lights in the city/suburbs?

Callz said:

So every tent I've come across has either a small amount of light leaks or alot (cough cough vivosun). Are there any that are recommended with none? I was looking at gorilla ones because I heard they are tested before sent out but have heard mixed reviews so I'm hesitant. The toplite 2x2 one had none but when I got the smaller 20"x20" ones they had leakes and caused some hermi issues. So what do you guys order that's bullet proof?

Click to expand...

I would suggest putting the tent into a room thats already dark. Then it doesn't really matter if there are any light leaks. I've read ALOT of reviews on grow tents and I've even read where super expensive Gorilla tents even have light leaks. I think the best way to avoid any issues is to put reflective stuff over whatever windows are in the room that the tent is in to keep light out, or put it into a room thats basically dark. If That's not an option, make your 12 hours of dark happen when its already dark outside and if any dark hours coincide with it getting light outside, make sure you cover any holes in the tent otherwise you run the risk of hermies