Best Light for each stage for X amount of plants

X amount of plants in this situation is 30 in rotation. So lets say I start 30 feminized seedlings, what is the best kind of lighting? and more importantly how much of said lighting do you need. Then outta that you select the best looking one for a mother plant, what light would you put over her? or do you just keep it in your veg room? Then you move those seedlings after the amounted time to the veg room, same question as before for 30 Mostly indica, fast flowering plants what is the best kind of lighting and how much of it for the 30 plants? Then the time has come when your beauties wanna blossom, you switch them over to your flowering room. What type and how much lighting for this end flowering stage?

I have done research and I think its like this:

1) Seedlings - CFL or Florescent Lightning of some type
2) Mother plant - Corner of veg room under MH lights
3) Veg room - MH lights'
4) Flowering room - HPS lights

That would be my opinion from what i gathered, but experience is where the knowledge's at, and Id love to hear your setup and success or failure stories and your advice to my questions above.

To recap in short, 30 Feminized Mostly Indicas w/ fast flower time that are heavy yielders is what i plan on growing unless yall gotta some strains that are good in those categories but

1) Seeds - What kind and how much light
2) Veg - What type of light and how much for 30 plants give or take
3) Flowering room - What type and how much


Thanks for your help and opinions

1000 watts HPS for each 4'x4' area, you probably need 2 of those at least. You can veg, flower and clone under just HPS.
Flowering room? Keep it well insulated, well ventilated and use carbon scrubbers to remove smell, exhaust to the outside.

NoDrama said:

1000 watts HPS for each 4'x4' area, you probably need 2 of those at least. You can veg, flower and clone under just HPS.
Flowering room? Keep it well insulated, well ventilated and use carbon scrubbers to remove smell, exhaust to the outside.

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Is that two in the flowering room and two in the veg room? and a low watt hps for the clones/seedlings? And is that the best route for the quickest/best quality product/

Also how much wattage per plant in each stage, is it the same or do you need more for flowering?

Clones & Seeds - Single 4' Strip 54Watt T5 High Output Florescent (I run 3 Aerocloners with 24 sites each under each strip light)
Veg first 2 weeks - 4-bulb 4 ft. 216 watt T5 Florescent - 1 light per 2'x4' area (I run 18 1 gallon under these)
Veg rest of time needed - 1 300watt Induction Bi-Spectrum Lamp (1 per 3'x6' on a mover) - create very little heat and bushy pants with tight internodal spacing
Flowering First 6 Weeks - 1000w Sunpulse 3k (1 per 3'x6' on a mover with 18 5 gallons in a flood tray)
Last 2 Weeks - 1000 watt Sunpulse 10k Ripening Bulb (1 per 3'x6' on a mover with 18 5 gallons in a flood tray)

I do seeds in my aerocloner under the same T5 4 foot strip bulb. I modified my neoprene rings to hold flexiplugs (tree bark seed plug). This creates an automated watering system for the seeds. It's the same concept as just cloning in the aerocloner. I stick the seed in and walk away. A week later all of the seeds have popped and are ready for transplant.

Dubdeuce said:

Clones & Seeds - Single 4' Strip 54Watt T5 High Output Florescent (I run 3 Aerocloners with 24 sites each under each strip light) So for 30 or so ONE single strip of that T5 High Output lighting would suffice, How long untill you switch to your veg section, what is it about 2 inches or so. They can be in the same section of the room as my vegging plants and mother plant, right?
Veg first 2 weeks - 4-bulb 4 ft. 216 watt T5 Florescent - 1 light per 2'x4' area (I run 18 1 gallon under these) why only 1 gallon? do you transplant them when its flower time?
Veg rest of time needed - 1 300watt Induction Bi-Spectrum Lamp (1 per 3'x6' on a mover) - create very little heat and bushy pants with tight internodal spacing Why is it better to add lights slightly into the veg cycle and at the end of the flowering stage, why wouldn't you want that power the entire time?
Flowering First 6 Weeks - 1000w Sunpulse 3k (1 per 3'x6' on a mover with 18 5 gallons in a flood tray)
Last 2 Weeks - 1000 watt Sunpulse 10k Ripening Bulb (1 per 3'x6' on a mover with 18 5 gallons in a flood tray)

I do seeds in my aerocloner under the same T5 4 foot strip bulb. I modified my neoprene rings to hold flexiplugs (tree bark seed plug). This creates an automated watering system for the seeds. It's the same concept as just cloning in the aerocloner. I stick the seed in and walk away. A week later all of the seeds have popped and are ready for transplant.
that areocloner just takes the place of the germination process? why wouldn't everyone have one...

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EDIT: I just noticed it looked like i replayed with nothing, my questions are in bold above, next to his suggestions.

GrowOver420 said:

X amount of plants in this situation is 30 in rotation. So lets say I start 30 feminized seedlings, what is the best kind of lighting? and more importantly how much of said lighting do you need. Then outta that you select the best looking one for a mother plant, what light would you put over her? or do you just keep it in your veg room? Then you move those seedlings after the amounted time to the veg room, same question as before for 30 Mostly indica, fast flowering plants what is the best kind of lighting and how much of it for the 30 plants? Then the time has come when your beauties wanna blossom, you switch them over to your flowering room. What type and how much lighting for this end flowering stage?

I have done research and I think its like this:

1) Seedlings - CFL or Florescent Lightning of some type
2) Mother plant - Corner of veg room under MH lights
3) Veg room - MH lights'
4) Flowering room - HPS lights

That would be my opinion from what i gathered, but experience is where the knowledge's at, and Id love to hear your setup and success or failure stories and your advice to my questions above.

To recap in short, 30 Feminized Mostly Indicas w/ fast flower time that are heavy yielders is what i plan on growing unless yall gotta some strains that are good in those categories but

1) Seeds - What kind and how much light
2) Veg - What type of light and how much for 30 plants give or take
3) Flowering room - What type and how much


Thanks for your help and opinions

Click to expand...

how well do ya think a 90w tri band UFO and two daytime CFL's will work in a small tent with prop nutrients for veg, and swapping out CFLs to soft white for 12/12 flowering would work? Thanks

So for 30 or so ONE single strip of that T5 High Output lighting would suffice, How long untill you switch to your veg section, what is it about 2 inches or so.

It's not really that a T5 will suffice for any specific number of clones. It's more along the lines of you have a 4 foot strip T5 Lightbulb and anything that can fit underneath the light will more than thrive rooting as a clone. We have (3) 24 site cloners under 1 54watt T5 Strip (literally just one bulb). So that's 72 clones under one bulb. We leave the cloned plants in the cloner as long as we need to before transplanting them. They usually last a couple months without any ill effects in the aerocloners. However, waiting 2 months to finally take the clone out, it will have like 2-4 foot roots that you will want to trim before placing into your pot. This undoubtedly stunts your plant for a few days...but we've only lost a few due to stress out of thousands at this point.

They can be in the same section of the room as my vegging plants and mother plant, right?


Yes, your clones can be in the same area as your vegging plants. However, the clones must receive some type of ambient light 24/7. If you run your veg lights 24/7 then could probably just throw your clones in the corner and use the ambient light from your veg lights. Cloning plants need very little lumens to actually root. They just need to know that life exists by having a small amount of light energy. If you do not run your veg lights 24 hours a day then you will definitely need some type of fluorescent lighting above/near your clones.

why only 1 gallon? do you transplant them when its flower time?

We use 1 gallon during veg because of room size restriction. Yes, we transplant 2 weeks before flowering into 5 gallon pots. If I had the same size veg room as flower room then I would veg directly in the pots that they would be flowering in. Since we run 5 gals in our flower room, in order to have a perpetual harvest with 5 gallons, you would need the same size room for flower as you would veg. To alleviate this, we run in the 1 gallon for just a couple weeks. Once it starts reaching the perimeter of it's container with it's growth it's usually time to transplant. This happens in 2 weeks or so. We then transplant to 5 gallons for the last couple weeks of veg. This allows us to only have like 40 5 gallons in the veg room, 40 1 gallon, and 40 fresh transplants in like 2 pint cups. Basically, it's all about having enough room to keep a perpetual harvest intact. If your veg room is the same as your flower than you are in luck and can veg in the same size as your flowering pots which is definitely optimal for the plants maximization.

Why is it better to add lights slightly into the veg cycle and at the end of the flowering stage, why wouldn't you want that power the entire time?

The reason we use different powered lights for different stages of the cycles are for a few different reasons:

1) The plants need less light during vegetation to grow than flowering. Flowering takes a lot more energy to create the buds, so more light is necessary during Flowering. Anywhere we can reduce wattage usage while still maintaining desirable results we will. Wattage = $$
2) Fresh transplants are susceptible to light stress from being under such a weak source during cloning. It is important to not over light your new transplants or you will undoubtedly stress them or even kill them.
3) Induction lights provide a great amount of usable PAR light without the added wattage and heat. Our plants not only seem to thrive but stay much stockier with tight inter-nodal spacing under induction lighting. I personally think induction lighting is the only way to go during veg after about a year of using them. However, they don't have very good penetration so as a flowering light they do not perform as well as HID (when it comes to overall yields, but the induction sure do produce a very pretty product).
4) Even when we enter flowering, we start with our lights at 75% (750 watts) for the first week. We use a Fieldscout PAR Meter to ensure that when we flip to 100% (1000 watt) that the PAR measurement is not drastically higher than what it was at 750 watts. Thats really always our goal. Introduce the new lighting regimen with a slightly higher PAR value then what it came from and slowly increase from there. Week by week we slowly lower the lights inch by inch as long as we so no heat or light stress.

It's kind of like trying to lift 500 lbs on benchpress on your first day in the gym. It's just not gonna happen, plus the potential for injury/death is severe. Life is a rhythm, but the rhythm must start out slow and smooth. Once at full speed, these plants can take damn near anything you can throw at them.

People will argue and contest that they throw their plants under 1000 watts right away at full intesnity, etc, etc and like I said, I'm sure you can do things contrary to my style listed here and still see great results...but without side by side comparisons of the same plant with records, I don't listen to anyone. I keep serious logs of all my environmental factors to ensure I can actually parse my data and yields to ensure that I'm always maximizing my crop.

Maximizing your yield is all about keeping your plants nice and comfortable. The more stress they endure, the more "recovery" time they will endure. Plants will not be growing during recovery time, but instead of course...recovering. Sure, you could drop your veg plants directly under a 1000 watt light and see what happens. I'm sure you wouldn't see any visible ill effects necessarily, but just because you didn't see anything physically, doesn't mean something didn't happen. That one day of light stress could have stunted growth by a day. 1 day could have been 1 gram per plant of stress. 1 gram of plant x 30 plants is over an ounce which is quite a bit.

that areocloner just takes the place of the germination process? why wouldn't everyone have one...

Yes, it provides perfect oxygenated water to the seed continually all day. No paper towels, no forgetting to keep them soaked and losing seeds, no germination needed at all. They will do it all themselves. Best part, you can have seeds next to clones too. Just have to modify the neoprene sleeve that holds the clone in to hold your flexiplugs. I use flexiplugs because they are made from tree bark and don't run off any type of waste or coco like a pellet potentially could.

Why doesn't everyone have an aerocloner? Well...people are scared of what they're not familiar with and sometimes things seem too good to be true. This is one of those rare circumstances, where it seems too good to be true, but it's not. I couldn't believe how fast clones propagate with zero maintenance and no humidity dome. Gone are the days of humidity domes, misting plants, and molding clone pellets. You clip the clone, dip in rooting hormone, place into your cloner and walk away. It's really that simple.

Stinkbud gives a guide on making your own aerocloner at the link below. They are super easy to make, the parts are easy to obtain, and much cheaper than a pre-made aerocloner. We made 6 aero cloners for the price of 2 commerical units. Of course, the commerical units are of slightly better construction and occupy a slightly smaller footprint, but all in all our cloners more than server their purpose.

https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/116859-harvest-pound-every-three-weeks.html

Hey Dubdeuce. I was wondering if you have done any DWC grows through flower with induction and if so what brand and wattage lamp did you use? I'm setting up a 4 x 6 tent and this day 18 video at a 1:15 in got me to thinking about it but you're still thinking only use these through veg and then flip to an HPS? I'd still like the UV (480nm)@ flower under the induction provides so it got me to thinking about maybe just adding more red peak (725nm) with an LED panel to the induction for flowering. Also what PAR micromole level do you shoot for on your canopy when using your Fieldscout meter @ flower?

Thanks for posting up and I appreciate any thoughts or comments you might have back for me.

[video=youtube;ROjGed0W2ew]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROjGed0W2ew&context=C4bfa44fADvjVQa1PpcFMS aJ0hWHIyceh_x7SMI1dp2_diDzBRr0w=[/video]

GrowOver420 said:

DUBDEUCE or anyone that knows of good products with great feedback

Im trying to find the best of these products below, I did some looking and was a little confused with the T5 lights and whichs ones he was talking about above, likes would be greatly appreciated

1- Single 4' Strip 54 watt T5 High Output Florescent
2- A aeroclo...

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1) Sunblaze T5 Single Bulb 4 Foot Strip Light - http://www.specialty-lights.com/960320.html
2) I would build a homademade aerocloner using this link - https://www.rollitup.org/hydroponics-aeroponics/116859-harvest-pound-every-three-weeks.html
3) Sunleaves Pioneer IV T5 4 Bulb 4 Foot Light - http://www.hhydro.com/Sunleaves-Pioneer-IV-T5.html
4) Lightrail 3.5 - http://www.lightrail3.com

Yeah, and honestly you can veg under damn near any light really. MH will veg fine, I just prefer the induction because they put off tons of usable light without all the extra heat. In regards to products with great feedback, if you can I would shop at a local store where they are good with warranties. The Pioneer T5 I linked you to has a 5-year warranty. One of ours just burned out a few weeks after 2 years and they replaced it on the spot without question. Saves a lot of hassle trying to ship warranty items back/waiting etc.

chazbolin said:

Hey Dubdeuce. I was wondering if you have done any DWC grows through flower with induction and if so what brand and wattage lamp did you use? I'm setting up a 4 x 6 tent and this day 18 video at a 1:15 in got me to thinking about it but you're still thinking only use these through veg and then flip to an HPS? I'd still like the UV (480nm)@ flower under the induction provides so it got me to thinking about maybe just adding more red peak (725nm) with an LED panel to the induction for flowering. Also what PAR micromole level do you shoot for on your canopy when using your Fieldscout meter @ flower?

Thanks for posting up and I appreciate any thoughts or comments you might have back for me.

Click to expand...

I have never done a DWC with Induction (yet). We are amidst sourcing and building our own undercurrent DWC. We have only ran coco and soil mixtures through flower with induction. We used a 300-watt Bi-spectrum induction lamp from M-LAND GLOBAL which is directly from China. We used (2) 300 watt induction lamps on top of a 3' x 6' botanicare flood tray. Our yields were relatively low, but it was kind of a thrown together experiment. Honestly, the results could have been much better had the all the plants been vegged the same time and had the canopy been kept in control.

I do think there is great potential for the induction lights to be used for flowering it's just a matter of being in control of your grow, which at the time we were all over the place. However, I will be doing a couple tests with the induction lighting starting in a couple weeks. When testing the PAR reading of induction lamps vs. HID, the induction lamps put off about as much as a 750 watts of HPS can. Ultimately a 1000 watt can put out more usable light then an induction but also puts out tons of extra heat. The problem I faced with the 300 watt induction was moreso adequate coverage. It produced beautifully dense, crystallised flowers where the lighting was proper, however where the canopy was uneven the results were less than desirable. I think 2 inductions on a mover with a controlled canopy would produce amazing results with only generating the heat of 1 600 watt. The bulbs produce so little heat a lot of times the plants find themselves tucked in under the reflector mere inches from the bulb and loving it. Haha. If the plant touches the bulb for any duration it can surely fry the tip also though.

By the time we are in the 3rd week flowering I am fine with anything between 1500-1900 umols at the highest point of the canopy. The sun outside reaches roughly 2000 uMol at it's peak, or so I've read.