I still wanna see pictures of your harvest , how many plants did you have? How many lights ? What wattage? What soil ? What nutes are you running? Give me the full rundown, I wish I had space I’m in a Tiny and I mean tiny 2 bedroom , so tents were my only option, and I’m scrogging so the plants can be maintained on height, also for extra support for the buds, I have a second net that is going to go up next week and also got a third if needed for the Sativas. Heard they jolt up in size, I flipped to 12/12 last night so at 8 am the light went off and then came back on at 8pm, no light leaks it’s in a windowless room, temps are about 70 when lights come on and 78 80 four hours later, I will be adding a AC to the room for during the day to mimic cold nights and hopefully get some good colors coming in!!! Yeah my plants need water but I have hella Home Depot buckets I fill up 3 buckets and aerate them as I’m using them and have a water pump for a small fish tank that I use so I can just feed in the line and switch it on switch it off to stop, eventually I will just have extended houses with male connectors at the end so I can just open the tent and instead of reaching in have on on every pot and jus plug and water unplug then plug to the next, let the pump do all the work and no reaching, and thank you I appreciate that a lot , it’s not as bad as you would think , but it’s forsure not easy, watering and feeding I have to keep a list and write when they got watered how much they were fed and how often and if I see any burn or deficiency, it’s all a work in progress, but I can master at least one strain no burns no deficiencies great quality buds I will be happy!
I'm running two 1000 watt hps lights cool hoods, two king plus 2000 watt LEDs which are supposed to be comparable to 1400 watts of hps each. So I'm running about 4800 watts total and 4 lights total. Next grow I will be adding another 1000 watt mh hps light and another 2000 watt king led so it will be around 7200 watts total. I'm using both hid and led because you get benefits from both kinds. Hid for high yield and led for dense potent buds.
For my soil I'm using fox farm ocean forest through the whole grow from seed up until now and added 20% more perlite for better aeration. I'm using 5 gallon vivosun fabric pots which the plants seem to really like since they dont get rootbound. I initially started the seeds in solo cups like you did with 5 holes on the bottom then transplanted at two weeks.
For nutes I'm using the whole line of fox farm grow big, big bloom, tiger bloom, open sesame, beastie blooms, and cha ching. I'm also using botanicare raw grape for sugars and carbohydrates. I only use half the strength of nutes since ff ocean forest already has nutes in it. I didn't start feeding until week 4 from seed.
I have two ac units in my grow room. One is a portable unit that is 14,500 btu and the other is a built in ductless split system that oscillates up and down over the plants.
I keep temps at 75-78f lights on. For the last few weeks I have 61-64f lights off to bring out the purple, before I had the lights off temps at around 68f. My RH is between 45-55% always.
Ventilation is very important so I have 1 exhaust 440 cfm going through the cool hoods and another 440 cfm exhaust close to the ceiling. My portable a.c unit also acts as an exhaust and intake since it's a dual hose unit 320 cfm I think. Then I have 300cfm intake on the floor. All intakes and exhaust are connected to my window so its fresh air coming in and exhaust leaving the room.
I'm also scrogging and I have two nets up but you will still need more support when the buds get heavy. I use yo yos that hang from the ceiling and clip onto the plants with a plastic hook, they're great and were a real lifesaver.
When I initiated flowering I gave them an initial 36 hours of uninterrupted darkness, I think that's why I saw pistols right away rather than weeks later. Then I continued to use the metal halide bulbs for 2 weeks to promote thick stems and minimize stretch.
My indoor grow is a total of 9 plants, next grow I will do 20. They start out small but boy do they get big quick. I topped all of them twice early in veg and I defoliated about 3 times. I did it twice during the last weeks of veg and once after flowering. I basically lollipopped them but kept plenty of fan leaves on for insurance in case of deficiencies. Never had any deficiencies so far and they just started their 7th week today so about 2 more weeks to go. I will post my harvest results for you and some pics of the buds.
I'm also running two 16 inch standing oscillating fans on each side of the plants and then I have two box fans blowing air underneath the canopy to prevent mold. I'm also running a 7 pint dehumidifier at night to keep RH down. Then I have a built in ceiling fan than blows air above the canopy.
I know lumens isn't the greatest gauge for light intensity but my lumens are 160,000-180,000 depending on the area of canopy so I have to keep my lights pretty far away at about 24-27 inches from canopy not because of heat but because it's so much light.
For my water I'm using a big berkey system which is the best water purifier you can get. They get rid of everything but the minerals so I never needed to add calmag and the plants seem to love it.It purifies just as well as RO water but without the hassle and expense. They aren't that expensive at around $200 considering what your getting it's worth it.
I think that's everything, let me know if you have any other questions. I'm looking really forward to harvesting since it's so close. It feels like Christmas for me lol, since this is my first grow and will really help my pain since I'm disabled and gdp is great for pain.