lighting figured out!!

Some of you may have read about my DWC start up and my switching over to soil. Well after 2 weeks I noticed that they did not seem to be growing as fast as they should be. I had to redesign my light box also. My planter is 2' x 3' and I built my own light box with 2 70w hps and 14 23w cfl's. I had all this stuff laying around so it was a cheap startup. Well after reading more about lite temp's I realized that my cfl's were the 2700 color temps so I was hitting my plants 36000 of 2700 color temps, so last night I changes all of the cfl's over to 6800 color temps and man did everything pickup over night. The last grow I did was in 1986 using a 16 floro tubes wrapped around my grow box and while it worked it took forever, so this site is great for the little details. I now have 22600 lumens of 6800 color temp and 13600 lumens of hps until I start flowering, then I will switch back to the other cfl's.

good luck man

Don't mix the word temps up for the word spectrum, but while you mentioned it you should try a day with just the hps's on and no cfl's.

Those cfl's operate in the 160-200f range, and by this I mean temperature. Fourteen of those suckers plus two 70w hps's over 2x3 may be completely counter productive if you aren't 100% sure the temperature all around the plants are below 80f.

It does not make sense that all that light wouldn't make them grow fast even if they were the wrong spectrum unless heat was a factor.

You should give us a picture of that setup.

He's talking specifically about the color temperature, and there are many terms for it. The numbers he's using are Kelvin ratings, what else do we call them if we don't call them color temperatures? No one talks about CRI when lighting for growing anything that utilizes photosynthesis that I've seen.

So, original poster, you've learned firsthand what color temperature means to growing.

OregonMeds said:

Don't mix the word temps up for the word spectrum, but while you mentioned it you should try a day with just the hps's on and no cfl's.

Those cfl's operate in the 160-200f range, and by this I mean temperature. Fourteen of those suckers plus two 70w hps's over 2x3 may be completely counter productive if you aren't 100% sure the temperature all around the plants are below 80f.

It does not make sense that all that light wouldn't make them grow fast even if they were the wrong spectrum unless heat was a factor.

You should give us a picture of that setup.

Click to expand...

You are correct about the temp problem. I brought a temperature and humidity data logger from work home and ran it for three days and my temps are running between 72 and 78 and humidity running between 35 and 55%. I keep fresh air coming in during the day and at night my trailer drops done into the 60's, The only problem I had was running a fan to much allowing the temps one day to dip below 70 so I turn the fan off before I go to bed. Currently this setup is inside my trailer and I will be moving it into the closet as soon as I finish the ventilation and odor control stuff. I will get pics posted shortly. Yes I was talking about kelvin. Thanks.

OK here are some pics and I did burn the babies a little after trans plant due to using the DWC water full off nutes to water a couple of times. Know they are on distilled water and doing much better. Two weeks old!

How is 72F-78F a temperature problem..?

You didn't put enough soil in those pots for the seedlings. Same mistake I made first grow. I'd repot them as soon as they have good root-balls formed, bring them closer to the top of the pot. Mine grew borked in direct sunlight til I did that.

You can't see what the pots are sitting in. The bottoms are cut out and they are sitting in a 45 gallon tote full of soil. I did not want to disturb the root ball so I have let them in place to support them as the roots grow into the tote. Thanks!