PAR T5/HPS DWC...FruityChronicJuice*BlueberryGum*BlueCheese* Autohobbit

Hey Uc. Alphawolf got the 100th post spot in your grow journal and this thing ain't even kicked off good yet. Not saying the Mari-guaro harvest wasnt a thing of beauty but the stars of the show are still just young'uns. Your putting out some awesome yet understandable info on PAR T5 use as well. I know I appreciate it. Keep on keepin on.

alphawolf.hack said:

what up uc? im about to swap my 250w mh in veg with 6 bulb 2ft t5 fixture its an open area main grow area is 3x3 and then the sub area(3x1) is just for mothers you think this would be a good swap? got any good links to go shopping? (4x3area)
actualy its more like a 3x3 area and i was looking at the 8 bulb fixture too. whats the reach with these lights how far away can i go b4 it becomes infective for compact growth?

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Well with a 250w HID youd have to keep it about 12" above the tops (at least I do w my 150w HPS, and I couldnt get my 400w within 2ft until I got my cool tube), and using the InverseSquare Law (or the HandyChart Ive attached!) you'll see how the 1ft of heat buffer will leave less than 1ft for the light to travel before it is almost useless. Ive seen that my T5's are pretty effective down to about 18".... with T5's the goal is to keep them as close to the tops as possible since they dont get hot to the touch and your leaves wont get burned if they grow onto a tube or if a leaf settles on a tube. It'll just light bleach the contact point, but it wont stress/burn the whole plant. So with T5's you can (in MY opinion) get as good if not better penetration than HID upto maybe a 600wHID, which is where they really just have so much intensity that they can be effective from a few feet away (again with a few feet buffer between bulb/tops) A cool tube will allow you to get an HID down lower, but an unshielded HID bulb has its drawbacks vs the benefits of T5.

Theres people that keep the T5's at 12" above the tops to let their bulbs blend spectrums better, and they still get good growth from that distance, but closer the better! you'll see the leaves cupping upward just reaching for more of that light they crave! They'll just look happier!

if your fixture is 2'x 12-16", you may struggle to fill out the whole 3x3 area. you may want to get 2 4bulb panels instead so you can put a little space between them to try to <-exxxpaaand-> your footprint. Basically, you dont get any lateral coverage from your panels. Whatever you can fit under the reflectors will be covered well, but expanding that footprint would require raising the fixture, which will decrease your output/penetration/intensity. Gotta keep em low, which limits your overall coverage to the actual dimensions of the panel. You could probably fit 4 plants under two 2'x4bulb panels, but you may struggle to get any more than 2plants under a single 2'x6bulb. It would be good for a 1x3 area tho, for the moms.

so you have an area that is 4' long?
for $100ea, one or two 4' 4bulbs would rock out!


guestimate -MH lumen outputs will be a little less (however they put out proportionally more heat than HPS so the req'd distances may be the same or more)
View attachment 2067591

okay i got a cooltube i could probably touch the tops with my light... i dont know right now im on the in between. i was thinkin about 3 4 ft t12 shop lights(have 5 of them from when i started) with chroma 50 tubes and cool white plus and stair case them one in front over my early rooted clones . then one behind for midway veg and then on behind that for my mothers. i want the 2 ft tube because in the future i want to build individual cabs for everything. also i definatley see the advantage of using flouro(full spectrum and less lumen needed because of closeness to the plant t5 especially full spectrum with all the bulbs that emit uv but would it be pointless to add uv to veg?) i just added uv (cfl zoo-med) to my flower and a definite improvement on the smell. i was thinking 3 2 bulb fixtures but i can figure out what combo of bulbs to use i will be using the same staircase as with the t 12.

for real thx for getting back to me i was really on the wall about this



http://hydroponics.net/ got the sunblaze for 70 after shipping im thinking about ordering these on at a time and replace my t 12's

The T12's would be ok for clones, but otherwise are very low intensity for the energy used, without seeing your setup firsthand, my first inclination is to say not to use them for anything more than clones. If you have the cooltube and MH for your main veg, then a 2'4bulb T5 ($70) would be fine for 2 mothers. Otherwise if you can fit a 4ft fixture in there, 2 4bulb 4' panels (100$ea) would be all you'd need, you could even scavenge light from it for your clones (just keep your clones lower/farther from the tubes than the rest of your Veggers) or... 3 2ft 4bulb panels at $70ea would be $210flat and you can move em all over and into individual cabs etc.

UV... none of these bulbs have any UV, their intensity drops sharply at right around 400nm which is just the start of UVa. The phosphors used in almost all tubes are designed to BLOCK UV since the light they emit is actually created by very harmful UVc inside the tubes, the Phosphor coating inside is excited by the UVc energy and then emits the wavelengths it was designed for which are engineered to contain only safe non-UV wavelengths. The only tubes that DO have UV usually have warnings and are for Reptiles and advertise as having the UV content as the selling point. The Repti-sun/glows are good, also the D3 bulb, I use a 26w cfl 10.0 (10x normal UV output as sunlight).

tubes without any phosphor coatings are used as germicidal lights for water/air purification. UVc light will destroy any/all organic cellular life in rapid fashion

alright im gonna keep it the same except add my t12 in for my mothers. reason i was gonna go t5 was to save wattage but it seems it will be the same lumen/watts either way i appreciate the info so no uv from t5 ahh i was misinformed ok. i will defiantly be using t5 in the future tho. you have won me over i see that it is more application specific. i use the mh for general lighting, its great, but rotating the plant and not having a light directly on top of my mothers kinda sucks. my clone machine just sits off to the side of mh and its pretty dim actually. when i add flouro over mother it will add light to that area. yep same here 26w cfl x2 reptisun 10.0 18 in above flowering plants.


of heres a link to see my room

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-room-design-setup/509282-starting-new-grow-room-3.html

Yeah everyones setup is different and circumstances can dictate yada yada yada, I still keep my HPS/cooltube in the flowering box for when they've outgrown the T5's. There's a whole different technique to applying light from a broad display like a 4x2' panel vs a single point of intensity like HID so no one can say something is the Best for someone else. I just like to drop the science on ya'll since Ive spent countless hours researching all this BS to figure alot out on my own, and enjoy saving others the headache

I do like the Reptisuns tho, be cautious as the increase in resin production can come at the risk of stunted growth, Im thinking im only gonna use it in the last half of flower so they can fully develop before getting that extra stress. And I cant be sure if they were causing my larger leaves to burn/crisp up and crumble at the end or if it was Nitrogen starvation

Also fyi, the glass of the actual bulb itself will block a large chunk of any UV created by MH lights, and the glass in a cool tube will block even more... yay for reptile lights!

yeah i know mh is mainly in the uva spectrum got in a big fight in the end i was wrong had to go right out and get the reptile bulbs. 400w hps 400w mh and 2 26 watt reptile lights in flower(reptile lights a as far as i can get them noticed some burning at first) ive heard stunting is minimal. so i had some plants that where around week 4 and i put the bulbs in i really havent noticed a stunt but rather an increase?? and sexing occuring sooner on other plants... look at the UVB FOR 12 HOURS thread in advanced cultivation these reptile lights are nothing according to him, he says they are advantageous but not enough power to really have a major stunting.(same guy who proved me a dumbass its cool tho its okay to be wrong imo. he has a sweet ass meter to)

Nice, yeah I've heard the cfls will really only cover a2x2 area so you may need a few to really cover well. Was it phaeton? Lol, I know hes got a sweet meter and uses the D3 bulb which is super strong.

And yeah, I don't mind being wrong either. Id rather learn whats correct than go on being wrong.

gimmie what i WANT!!!!

hobbit pix lol you said yours was starting to bud?

matthebrute said:

gimmie what i WANT!!!!

hobbit pix lol you said yours was starting to bud?

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Lol K, pic update tonite yeah shes budding nicely under 20/4

dam mine is procrastinating under 18/6 but is growing quite tall

Undercover Cop said:

Lol K, pic update tonite yeah shes budding nicely under 20/4

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OH HELL YEAH! Little, juvenile, Hobbit, sluts showin off their goodies fer the camera. Damn! Why do I feel like such a freakin perv right now? Is this like MJ, Middle Earth, kiddie porn? I feel so..... dirty. Shameful. Shameful I tell ya, but I just can't help myself. Oh GAWD! I think I have a problem.

Ok I have pics, maybe budding was an overestimate, but she has multiple sites with multiple pistils and Im seeing some calyxes starting to develop only 5"tall

stand by

PIC UPDATE 19FEB!!!

Kiss The Cook!!!
View attachment 2069744
Final#'s for the Mariju-aro cactus... 14.6oz wet, after drying and removing a few buds for a friend that helped me trim...112g dried and currently curing.


The red bud is from the sativa I harvested at 6weeks, the buds were so underdeveloped that the pistils were proportionally dominant and made this nice dark red color, its MUCH better than the bag it originally came from, very smooth. She grew up fast with a fucked up childhood where I kept her locked away by herself in my garage with no food! then I didnt dry her before jarring so despite having no mold she smells rather footy lol, like a stinky locker room. until you break open a bud then she's pure bud. No fruit or sweet, just pure clean MJ. She pulls smooth and clean and is just "soft", but with a nice head buzz thats good to relax and definately makes you absent minded

i cant report on the Marij-uaro yet tho. still curing.


Ok, So tomorrow my babies will be 1month old (from first sign of taproot) and the hobbit is already in full swing. The blue cheese may be around 5 weeks or so, and Im starting to think that its just a common mexican bag sativa afterall just from the the growing characteristics and leaf/stalk structure/size etc. anyway I just topped it at about 8-9" and I think Ill move her over to flower within the week. The BlueberryGum is going a little slow, I blame myself. When I changed the nutes I gave a little too much water, which she can tolerate with the air rock, but the water was bubbling up through the rocks and I believe caused too much humidity right at the surface of the medium (hydroton) and the lowest leaves got waterlogged and started to shrivel. I corrected and repaired and she's thriving now. The FCJ and Hobbit are both doing well, Im suprised how quick the Hobbit is growing, but cant believe she's supposed to be close to half way done.


BlueCheese (imposter?)

She might be a sativa afterall... but damn look at those leaves cupped upwards to take in all that PAR light! they love it, you can tell. I just topped her, and am waiting a few days before switching into flower.


BBG

She started off a little slow after I gave her abit too much water on feeding day (too deep) but she's fine now.


FCJ

FCJ, coming along nicely, not an inperfection on her.


the Hobbit

some close-ups!





The flowering babies are doing well, one is budding up quie nicely, quite suprising for being only 5weeks old (has been under 12/12 since about 10days old) Im trying to see if you can get a better return from auto's or a few mexican beans in 12/12 from seed. The other is about 4weeks old and also had slight leaf damage from humidity/water. Its also doing well now, as you can see from the pics.

mad nice undercover crop. you are doing some sweet shit with these t5's. keep up the good work.

how for do you keep your t5's away from your plants? BTW that veg panel looks sick...Can't wait till I get my bulbs

as close as possible. 1-2" when you can but there are people that get good results at 12". if a leaf grows onto the tube or touches it, it'll just get bleached on the part that sits on the tube. But it wont stress or damage the plant itself, and Ive seen that leaves will repair after a little time. try that with HID!!!

They like the light as close as possible too, notice how the top leaves are all reaching up for more, where the lower leaves are just kinda there chillin. The leaves that are close enough to get a good taste of quality light are hooked like junkies, they want it!

Thanx Uc. That all looked great. The kids look like their responding very well to your parenting skills. Maybe watch some Nickelodeon with em from time to time. lol. All the best to ya.

Wow, well this fucking sux. we just lost the last months worth of posts......

Yes, lots of info lost and will never be found