New Member

[Maxwax]

Hi everyone. Dave here. First grow starting soon with new equipment. 39x 39 x 71 Mars Grow Tent with a 450 watt Mars Bridgelux LED.

I have 40 years in chemical lawn care and have a decent understanding of nutrients, ph, etc and have been studying and reading on cannabis growing.

Im still waiting on delivery of my tent, light and filtration.

I am waiting on Dosi-Do fems from ILGM and plan on growing 2 plants.

Ill have a lot of questions moving forward but right now I need help deciding on a humidifier for my small tent or room.

I will have my tent in a dedicated room. Do I need to humidify the tent? Or can I use a larger room humidifier outside the tent and control the overall room humidity?

Or....does anyone have recommendations for a small humidifier with a humidistat for inside the tent.

Top fill would be a huge bonus

Thank you.

 

[SweetLeafGrow]

Greetings and Welcome to the Farm!

I have tried putting a dehumidifier in my tent and it worked OK but was a big pain. I have found the easiest way, and the way the experts here recommend, to condition the room where your tent is and then use fans inside the tent to further refine things. For example, during the winter I run a humidifier in my grow room space because of the low RH due to running the furnace. However, after watering the plants, the RH in the tent always rises and I can control that using the 8" inline fan that pulls less moist air in through vents in the lower part of the tent and exhausts the moist air out a port near the top. This also helps control temps from getting too high when the lights are on.

The humidifier I use in the room is called Essick Air 4-Speed Console Style Humidifier and was $150. I am fairly happy with it, it holds almost 5 gallons of water at a time and has a humidistat to help keep the room at a specified RH. I also have a couple of dehumidifiers that I use in the summer when it's humid, again, I run these in the room, not the tent.

Hope this helps!

 

[Maxwax]

Thank you Sweet. Makes good sense to me. I have a 6 inch inline deal with a carbon filter and a 6 inch breeze fan and will make sure my bottom duct is wide open. I shouldnt run into over humidity issues in summer as the room is air conditioned but here in Michigan it can be dry as a bone. Especially in winter. Ill look at your humidifier but top fill is a must have for me Ive had humidifiers before and bottom fills are a pain.

 

[SweetLeafGrow]

The one I have is I think what you would call top fill. You lift a small cover on top of the unit and the res is there, you pull up and out. Fill it and put it back in. Fairly simple.

 

[Maxwax]

Mars Hydro delivered in one week and the 3.3 x 3.3 x 71 tent went up easy in 20 minutes. The FC-E 4800 BridgeLux 480W LED Grow Light is blinding bright and should perform awesome in this size tent. The light is as big as the tent and will provide great coverage. The Mars 6 inch exhaust fan is heavy duty and powerful. Seeds have shipped and everything else is in stock ready to go. Im still planning on growing just 2 plants of Dosi-do in Happy Frog with basic FF nutrients plus Cal-Mag as needed. My tap water is right about 7.0 PH. 300 PPM TDS. Its hard. Id like better water but it adds another dimension maybe next time.

 

[CannaGranny]

Mars Hydro delivered in one week and the 3.3 x 3.3 x 71 tent went up easy in 20 minutes. The FC-E 4800 BridgeLux 480W LED Grow Light is blinding bright and should perform awesome in this size tent. The light is as big as the tent and will provide great coverage. The Mars 6 inch exhaust fan is heavy duty and powerful. Seeds have shipped and everything else is in stock ready to go. Im still planning on growing just 2 plants of Dosi-do in Happy Frog with basic FF nutrients plus Cal-Mag as needed. My tap water is right about 7.0 PH. 300 PPM TDS. Its hard. Id like better water but it adds another dimension maybe next time.

Probably one of the most important things..ph. If you do not drop your ph you will begin to see all kinds of things that you won’t like going on. It will happen overnight and leave you scratching your head about what has happened. It also causes nine kinds of work to correct that and even then sometimes they do not recover. Early or mid grow is the worst time to have to deal with this. Right at seven puts you in a lock out zone and the ladies will suffer greatly. A ph pen is cheap. Growing organically, I simply use distilled white vinegar to lower the ph of my well water. One of if not the most important aspect of your grow.

 

[Maxwax]

Probably one of the most important things..ph. If you do not drop your ph you will begin to see all kinds of things that you won’t like going on. It will happen overnight and leave you scratching your head about what has happened. It also causes nine kinds of work to correct that and even then sometimes they do not recover. Early or mid grow is the worst time to have to deal with this. Right at seven puts you in a lock out zone and the ladies will suffer greatly. A ph pen is cheap. Growing organically, I simply use distilled white vinegar to lower the ph of my well water. One of if not the most important aspect of your grow.

Hi Granny,

Yes I understand the importance of PH. I own a chemical lawn care company and have been treating and studying turf and soil or 35 years. I'll be lowering the h20 PH a few tenths at least. I am using 100% FF Happy Frog so my soil PH should be good and I wont need nutrients until just before the plant tells me they want them. Or at least not until half way through my estimated 5 week veg. Im hesitant to buy a soil PH meter or strips Ive found them unreliable and a pain. I do have a TDS and solution PH pen. If you could explain to me one thing. Do I need to test my runoff after watering and or feeding? Ill have my bags tilted forward slightly for collection and such. What does this number tell me if thats what people do and also.....does anyone water their trays and let the water absorb bottom up? Instead of watering top down. My grow bags are in cat litter pans...lol OH! My 5 ILGM Dosi Dos have sprouted and will be in jiffy pots tomorrow, 75% humidity 70 degrees with around 325 PPFD/Umols at 30 inches.

 

[josefrahl]

Welcome aboard!!

 

[Maxwax]

Ok I did some reading on testing PH post watering or flushing. Im not convinced its a great indicator of "soil" ph but good enough. Switched my grow bags to 3 gallons for my first indoor run of 3 plants (was gonna run 5 gallon bags with 2 plants) and Ill use 5 gallon bags for my 2 plant back deck outdoor grow.

 

[Blastfact]

Hello and welcome. I've never had any luck with whole home or room humidification especially through veg and early flower. My tent in in my office/cave. I don't want my room at 50% to 80% RH. But still reap the benefits central A/C and heat otherwise. I put a small humidifier in the tent and control it with a Inkbird. And have recently switched to a AC Infinity exhaust fan and use it's basic programable controller to control temp in the tent. I could use the AC Infinity controller to kind of control the humidity and temp. But that means the humidifier is on 24/7 so the exhaust fan is on more than it needs to be and filling your living space with the humidity. So while it's not perfect it's far better than running off one controller. I could run a simpler exhaust fan and humidifier off the Inkbird but I would loose the variable speed control of the exhaust fan it's controller gives it.

Week 3 from sprout helmet heads.

Controls.

 

[Maxwax]

4 days after emerging from soil.

Maintaining 75/70 temp/hum +- lights still at 28" 350 PPFD. Watering twice a day with corrected tap water at 6.5. Lost one seed that germinated but didn't emerge from soil and one underachiever that looks healthy even under a 40X but will not grow.

I notice this FF HF soil has small wood chips and wondered if theres something stalling my taproot so I aerated a little with a toothpick and did feel something below. Did that early yesterday seeing no ill effects or positive.

Any thoughts on the small chick?

(The readings on my gauge there are low as I was on the bench out of the tent)

 

[Maxwax]

Ive also decided (unless convinced otherwise) to use sulfur free Molasses and some 2% milk in my waterings. Light dose no more than a tablespoon each per gallon. I wont add that for another week or so. No other nutrients scheduled yet.