Hi all! thanks for the advice to all, and the good vibes too
!!
Wanted to make alittle more research before re-posting.
I get your point, there are things more essential that if not properly implemented would have a greater impact in quality/yield. You are rigth, in fact, this is my first indoor experience, but i had four previous experiences outside. First one didnt hit at all, second one i believe one of the ladies coulndt stand the hormones in foliar spiruline aplicattion (kelp is hard to get here and $$$), so it hermied, or prob she wasnt cis beacause that thing was monstrous.
Then, i misunderstooded the the parable of the Tares
, so i ended up ripping off the hairs from the bananas, a few meters from the sis... Weeeell, i think the only lady left had 0% hairs, there were only seeds, covered with frosty resin. Neigbours would have prob killed me if known, LOL.
Third was a single lady in a balcony that barely had any sun left in autumn, but was OK, did the 48hs night thing and lots of flush with cold water, it litterally developed little drops of resin at some spots, but hadnt much
terpenes anyways so was mostly for the looks i believe. i ll try to replicate that, less light last few weeks, flush with rather cold water (of course over 32 F), and 48 hs night in the end. I like frosty hard nugs that kick hard rather than airy big fat buds, but thats mostly because i like to smoke all day in homeopathic doses most of the time.
fourth time i decided to go more serious and research sumed up, so this time i bought some fem seeds. One was killed by the cat (blue dream, but short pheno), other, Frisian dew, who prob died of heat :'( while i was out a week and my mum was taking care of her ,no hard feelings at all, it was a HOT week). Another dindt sprouted and i had only two left. A Critical Kush from dinafem and a King Kong from Doctor Undergound. The KK had all her fan leaves yellow arround 3 week of flower, while CK was preaty healthy, and smelly. Everything was going nice, but then arround 4-5 week we had 15 days of storms ahead, wasnt home when the storms started so go figure... In the end they yielded 10 ounces. I was pretty surprised when the drying finished to see that the CK had became odorleess and tasteless, while the KK yielded less but great in quality. It could be attributed that as the storms wouldnt end i dried them in separate closets, the KK had Calcium Chloride while the other litterally had mineral carbon in the floor ( apparently the carbon attracts
terpenes or so i read somewhere). The KK was really good though, my "rich" full day stoned friends really wanted me to sell them a little, and are the kind of people that pay lots of $$$ for pot they BELIEVE is class A.
So, despite i'm certanly not an experienced grower, i´m pretty obsessive with the stuff i make, not beacause i want to feel good, or better than someone, nor i belive making great pot makes you any better person, im just passionate with the things i love, and men i love grow weed and plants in general, but cannabis seems to have come from mars in many ways, and it makes me sleep at night wich is really valuable for me. In that last grow i readed Jorge cervantes almost entirely, and well, discovered this beautifull forum, and forums slowly became my best friends, also in electronics and audio, wich is "my" stuff (Prob should have saved all that for the divan, LOL).
At this point the grow is working (2.6x3.3), only the exhaust fan (80cm pc cooler and have another one if needed) needs to be connected to a PS to be "Finished". Ladies (already 3 of 5) been vegin for like 3 weeks, are growing fast, really healthy, except one, wich exhibited chlorosis in the second node fan leaves, it may be overwatering, as the soil is reataining too much moisture (takes arround 4-5 days to be fully dry after being watered until a little runs off), or magnessium defficiency (i have epsom salts but the lights seem to be 24/0, prob the timer isnt working IDK). I discarded Nitrogen defficiency because the other leaves are rather dark green (tips not burned though), the earth is new, and it has guano, blood meal and earthworm compost. They slowed a little down with the topings, but now you can see a couple of inches of grow each day. The earth also had Azomite, dolomite, bone meal, and mycorrhizae . Got lazy with the alfalfa, it will be for the next one... Only nutrients are Kelp extract, Molasses with micronutes, the golden humic/fulvic stuff. Also have Monopotassium Phosphate (MKP) , but am not sure about dossage, was thinking of 1% foliar aplicattion twice arround 3 week, with a 1-2% Epsom Gypsum foliar in between. Actually, as they are so dark green they only had one dose of Kelp, and one of humics in the transplant to the 5L pots. QB is at 50% at about 12 inches from the cannopy.
Thing is, i dont think the QB will cover nicely the 3.3 feet of lentgh. Good news is i remembered i have an HPS or Mh(150 or 200) with a mag ballast, but i need to recover it first, mama use it to print images into ceramics from time to time. If it s 2100-3700 K, things would be as follows in flower: 1 to 3ish weeks of QB at full power to keep scrog mannageable, 3 ish qb+HID to promote bud growth, 2 ish QB only a little upper for better coverage and less light.
Now, regarding the original theme, adding another QB is too much $$$ as they cost here 3 times what they cost in amazon, and alibaba is a roulette here. So, if for some reason the HID isnt working my approach would be to get two 038 Citizen leds runing at 45 W, each in each extreme, pointing to the center to get better canopy penetration, with ledil lens with an angle that makes 1 ray run parallel to the wall, accounting inclination of course. 3000k ones, to aide in middle flowering. Here that is the better $/quality led atm i believe. There are some mini quantum boards with Osram diodes though, but a bit more pricey.
And now about the UV, prob not in this grow, but i ll deffinetely gonna try it. But there are different options here. First off i would like to share some information, hope it didnt pop up from here:
From that, my conclussion is that the "twisted" CFL without jig would produce a cardiod (sorry for the term) pattern, that would be rather difficul to distribute evenly in the grow tent, also they are less efficient, as the sides of the tube that point to the tube would not produce any output. The easiest way would be to put a t5 HO CFL parallel to the longer side of the tent in the middle. And also, the arcadia pro T5 HO CFL would provide the most coverage if one could put it at least 20' above from the canopy. Somewhere else i read that the ratio of UVa to UVb has an impact, and that one seeks a ratio of at least 3:1, wich some phillips provided from memory. That same page stated that lower ratios would be detrimental, while putting only UVb wouldnt do any good to the girls.
There is also the option to use Arc tubes that would provide a more FS source of UVb. I wouldnt mess with mercury vapour as i believe it has a lot of UVc. And for the link i will provide next i believe that glasses that filters UVc also filters UVb:
There u can see that GE delivers Metal Halide lamps, some of wich blocks UVc, and apparently UVb, and some who doesnt. Something seems awkward though, u ll see that UVc control lamps, filters more the Uvb than the UVv, and for some reason has much more UVa than the rg-3 lamps. Thats a problem, i want UVb and UVa (this one makes no harm so better to have it to get a better FS, outside par anyways), not at all UVc, that will stress the plant, but also progressivelly (if u are in luck) kill it. I believe the same would apply to Mh and Cmh. It was rather hard to find the spectrums of lamps at such short wavelength.
Here is a Mh that lets pass UV, cant tell what happens below 300nm though:
https://www.geindustrial.com.ar/descargables/lamparas/Hoja-Tecnica-Kolorarc.pdf .
Probably the cheaper HID will have the thinner glass...
On the otherhand i also messed arround with CMh spectrum, and at least the ones from phillps seems to completely filter UV, at least the ones listed in the page now:
https://www.lighting.philips.com/ma...ntensity-discharge-lamps/ceramic-metal-halide .
The retro white certainly had UV though.
And to finish i found a Sylvania catalogue with all their spectrums (page 178-179 all lamp spectrums together):
INCANDESCENT 8-29 GUIDE TO SYMBOLS 7 TUNGSTEN HALOGEN 30-67 FLUORESCENT TUBES 114-139 COMPACT FLUORESCENT 82-113 INTRODUCTION SPECIAL APPLICATIONS 180-217 2-6 SYLVANIA LIGHTING 2 www.sylvania-lamps.com
issuu.com
The HSI-TD/D is prob the one with most UV, in industrial quantities i would say. But it most probably has UVc too. Anyway its hard to tell as prob the manufacturer limeted the axis to approx 380 nm intentionally. Some Uv will pass the UV STOP? probabbly, but as we see with GE, the glass will probabbly filter even more UVb than Uvc, to really low power in those frecuencies. Also the Britespor Blue may worth a shot, it also has some far reds, no greens.... HSI-T / Daylight seems a more FS approach, surely higher par.
The reptistar accoumplish the ratio of UVa:UVb , which is another plus for those.
The other last option i see there is the Coralarc 20000K that to me is the best graph in the UV Region: tons of UVa and the UVb is provided by almost a bell shape centered at 300 nm:
https://www.proflamps.com/datasheets/Coralarc-150W.pdf . Also graphs has different scale in RSP, so actually the t8 5% stil puts much more energy in the 310-315 region, but fades completely at 300. So the Arc bulb provides a more even UVb response. Of course we are all thinking, 20k r u f*** kidding me, but see the spectre of the zoomed 10.0 (i believe no HO though):
www.uvguide.co.uk
See the blue spike in ~450nm? same happens to reptistar... and both have a little pike in 315 to fade out completely in 300...
The relation between the blue peak vs the peak in the UV region in the reptile bulbs is ~7x and for the coralarc its about the same. So before pointing out the bisarre kelvin number, bear in mind, reptile bulbs may be arround that number in K scale. Its surprising how same they are in shape in the par region, including the arcadia one.
To me both seem equally usable, and in my case, quite cheaper to run the coralarc as i have a mag ballas for HID and MH. Also the arc lamp produces all the UVB wave lenght while the reptile bulbs only cover the upper half, while luckily apparently neither emmits UVc. Also not sure how to compare the actual watts to usable uvb light, but without knowing anything i would say there is more UV in the 250w Coralarc than in a couple of ho 10.0 t5's . But that i dont know, probably someone can compare that better?
So my conclusion, without any empirical evidence, is i wouldnt like to be using any UVb light all the way through, probably a little in veg to get the plants used to it a little, were such cold light wouldnt necesarely would be bad (most certainly not using it 100% time lights are on). Then off for the beggining-mid flowering, to get a more red spectrum to help bud cells elongation, to finally put it on the last couple of weeks, not necesarely all the time QB is on. It may even produce, shorter, bushier w / shorter internodal space plants. Does anyone know if someone using the reptile lamps have noticed any change in the vegetative grow when they use the UVb there? I think i remember the MAID (sorry cant remember the full nick
) told that puting a 10k bulb in vegetative made the plants sex, and even flower in some extreme cases, i may be wrong anyway...
I ll appear again in some time, need to study a lot these days, and not exactly lights LOL, but it was funny to see how acoustics and optics touches in many places. i ll try to see if someone growed some kind of terrestrial plant using high kelvin bulbs and wich was the result.
Hope u all are as nice as some of the niceladies you post,at least spiritually
Regards!
. I´m making an indoor for my GF. We are not in US, but we mannage to get a viparspectra p1000 for a 3x3 ish room. I know we are a little short for the size and i was planing to make some scrog. For veg it should be OK, but i would like to have a little more headroom for the flowering stage. If you take a look at the p1000 you will realize that most of the spectrum is concentrated in the blue range, again, "ideal" for veggin. So i thought ok, i need a couple more watts for flowering, why wouldnt i add those in the spectrum for it to have more red as its what the plant wants at that stage (read it here somewhere).
