CFL and Red Blue Grow

Greenmountainman

Active Member
So this is my second go around indoors, and I unfortunately i had to return the 4hundo hps to the buddy i was borrowing it from. Now I have a 14w and 45w Red Blue Panel, and 6 23w CFL (100w eqiv) and plan on using 16 total for 5 plants.

Any suggestions on lighting schedules of adding cfls throughout the vegging cycel?

the 23w's have 1650lumens a piece so im thinking around 30000 total for flowering would be enough.

Any Idea if I should use the red blue throughout the grow or only veg, only flow?

I'm also using foxfarm nutrients big grow and big bloom. Is there a different nutrient schedule with cfl's compared to hps because of the lack of intensity?

I also have my cfl's on a 24 hour cycle for a few weeks to promote vigorous growth.

any suggestions would be of great help.
 

Greenmountainman

Active Member
So after starting with five and going to sever nutrient burn due to poor choice in potting choice. One clay, high drainage, survived and now has a 6 inches tap root coming from the 1" drainage hole in the bottle of the clay pot.
Using a 5 gallon painters bucket I put the clay pot, suspended 3 inches from the bottom, inside the painters bucket.

Will I now be able to use that tap root as an alternative nutrient source when excess water drains from the bottom of the pot?

here are also some photos from the days before i made this change and any help on nutrient burn or what form this is, would be most appreciated.

Green Mountain Man
 

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Greenmountainman

Active Member
Red Blue Panel is a 45w Red and Blue LED lighting Panel. The panel itself is called a Glowpanel. The plants show pretty sigificant bending towards the 45w Red Blue over a high wattage CFL but it only seems to help the plant during flowering. It makes a great supplement to help thicken the resin production and bud development.
 

Greenmountainman

Active Member
So after flushing the high drainage soil medium I was able to monitor the intervenal chlorosis that was developing due to the lack of micronutrients.

Once the plant showed healthier growth and reached 18inches in height, I transitioned from 18, to 16, 14, to 12 hour light cycle every two weeks. This really seems to help with the density.

These photos are 7 weeks into flowering with 9 23w (100w eq: 1650 lumens) cfls, and a 45 red blue glowpanel.

Verdict: the red blue is amazing at convincing the plant to produce infinite amount of trichromes. I believe the plant recognizes the value in the red blue spectrum of light and creates more thrichrome development. The overall percentage of the thrichromes across the plant were more developed then without the red bolue panel.

This is great for flowering but don't waste your time with it during vegetative growth, I havent seen a benefit to it. I'm currently trying one 18 hour cycle with a red blue vegetative and one with out a red blue to see if it increases the vegetative growth. Both plants are about the same size.
 

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