Howdy all. Have a lot of ideas bouncing around, sorry in advance if this gets to be a lengthy post. (read "novel")
CHAPTER 1- WHERE I AM AND WHAT BROUGHT ME HERE
Just starting to get into indoor after about 20 or so years of outdoor. I live in a crappy neighborhood with nefarious individuals afoot bearing varying degrees of sticky finger, and not of the trichome induced variety. I have lived here about 7 years and have only grown twice in that time because didn't want to deal with the headache of constantly worrying while I was at work. I have some considerable health issues which cannabis of both the THC and CBD varieties help with, so although I wasn't growing I was still consuming and this led to some very high monthly expenses via trips to the collectives, who around here only sell 1/8 at a time for $50-$60 for anything decent.
Recently it was brought to my attention that for what I was spending at the dispensery on an average month could get me a fair little grow tent set up, and for just what I spent in about 2 months I could get a pretty nice one. This hadn't even crossed my mind because the last time I had looked into it some 20+ years ago I had no idea about grow tents (if they were even around) and anybody I knew who had even a small grow room had thousands invested and was paying an average of $500 or so per month in electrical. I didn't realize the the cost and efficiency of all the equipment involved had evolved to the point of an indoor grow being relatively "affordable."
Redundant or not, this information brings me to my current situation; I don't know a whole lot about indoor growing and have nobody in my personal life that I can ask. I feel that doing my own research is doing me good but I have reached a crossroads where any amount of research is not helping me make the decisions I need to move forward; something I am hoping some peer to peer advice can assist with.
I have decided to go LED. It is my understanding that the hobby is at a point where there is a lot of resistance to the conversion to LED and as a saltwater reef tank keeper I completely understand that. The reef keeping hobby went through the same thing about 10 years back but pulled through it unscathed and now the folks using MH and HPS are an extreme minority; with the people using LED producing just as good quality anemones,corals, and clams as any MH/HPS setup ever did.
That being said one thing that reef keeping with LED also taught me is that the larger, more well known companies will take a light fixture worth maybe a few hundred bucks and then charge you an additional $1,000+ to add their name on it *cough ECOTECH cough* and I am seeing the same thing happening in the grow light market.
I know the best route would likely be to get on rapidled and get the stuff to build my own light system as I did with my aquarium, but I really don't have the time nor the desire for a DIY lighting project right now. What I decided to do in the meantime is order some inexpensive LED lights from amazon that seem to have good specs as far as spectrum and true wattage draw. A small part of my research was done on YouTube where I saw videos of people using a single 1,000 watt equivalent LED fixture to produce buds I would be fairly happy with in a 4x4 tent, so I purchased one of the ones I saw being used on there. This is that one: (LINK REMOVED SORRY CAN'T POST ONE YET I GUESS)
It draws right about 250 watts true power.
Then, as I did more research, I saw several threads on here recommending LED lighting for a 4x4 and several people were saying that 1 250-300w fixture and you will need actually about 600-1000 true draw watts of LED. I also was reading quite a bit about these new(ish?) COB LED's and so decided to buy two more COB fixtures rated at 300 true watts each. I was planning to run one on each side of the previous light. This is the second and third fixture(s):
(LINK REMOVED)
I might add that the reason I wanted to start with the lights is because right before I found out about the reduced cost of setting up an indoor grow I had purchased 6 DH Nursery clones for another attempt at growing outdoors. When I found out about the affordability of indoor grows these days I decided to uses those clones for an indoor grow so for now they are in my 4x2 closet, but I needed some light for them.
CHAPTER 2 - WHAT SPACE TO USE?
So now you know the thought processes that got me to this point and the pieces of equipment I have so far. As I mentioned before I was originally intrigued by the idea of a 4x4 grow tent which is what got me started along this path, but the reason I question it is because I have seen people just grow right out in the open in a spare room and produce buds I would be very happy with. I came across one video buy a YouTuber called potsquatch grower or something like that and he was producing very nice looking buds in a spare room that wasn't even white, the walls where red brick. I don't know much else about his grow other than he is growing in a brick walled spare room and pulling great looking buds.
I have a spare bedroom that has an attached spare bathroom... should I just grow in there and attach some ducting to the bathroom vent to pull air?
The walls in said bedroom are an ugly pea green but apparently that doesn't matter? In a tent the walls are reflective to bounce light that would otherwise be wasted back to the plants, correct? So if you just grow in a wide open space with no reflective surface nearby than the light that would be getting reflect back by the tent wall is just getting wasted? Does that matter though? Evidence would suggest that it doesn't matter much, if at all... so by that logic is the reflective quality of the walls in a grow tent a redundant feature?
If a tent is still the recommended way to go in my scenario, what size tent would be perfect for the light setup I have now? Should I go with my original instinct and do 4x4?
CHAPTER 3 - BUGS!
As a young whippersnapper in my 20's I kept going to school for things only to realize once I got the degree that wasn't actually what I wanted to do. This left me with several unused degrees, one of which is in entomology. I have many (read "small zoo") bio-active terrariums and paludariums in my house. In order for a completely bio-active setup of that nature to thrive you need a balance of organisms which Collembola (springtails) and isopods (rolly pollys, sawbugs etc) and some predator to keep their numbers in line. The springtails eat the mold that is near unavoidable in an enclosed and humid environment such as a paludarium, and the isopods eat any decaying matter.
I am toying with the prospect of setting up a grow tent/ terrarium hybrid fertilized by organic compost tea with a living maintenance crew. My idea would be to add the springtails and isopods which would eliminate any mold and any residual compost tea. I would then add a colony of carpenter ants which would forage the tent in small numbers, staying in their chunk of wood and only scouting in small groups of 5-10. The ants would keep the springtails and isopods numbers in check and also would harvest any mites they found. Everything would produce waste AKA frass. There are other options, for example a family of poison dart frogs would keep the numbers of all the other species in check but I don't think the tent would be getting humid enough for them? 80% or so?
I know it probably makes me sound like the Willy Wonka of indoor grows but it really is a feasible thing to accomplish... I am actually struggling to come up with a legitimate reason why it wouldn't work. For anybody who doesn't want to touch chapter 3's topic with a 10 foot pole any input on the rest would be great appreciated.
Again I am sorry for those who are rubbed the wrong way by the length of this post; I can't guarantee that is something that gets any better the longer I stick around... as someone with autism this is not only how I write but often the way I speak, which is something I have grown accustom to as pushing people away.
Thank you for your time!
CHAPTER 1- WHERE I AM AND WHAT BROUGHT ME HERE
Just starting to get into indoor after about 20 or so years of outdoor. I live in a crappy neighborhood with nefarious individuals afoot bearing varying degrees of sticky finger, and not of the trichome induced variety. I have lived here about 7 years and have only grown twice in that time because didn't want to deal with the headache of constantly worrying while I was at work. I have some considerable health issues which cannabis of both the THC and CBD varieties help with, so although I wasn't growing I was still consuming and this led to some very high monthly expenses via trips to the collectives, who around here only sell 1/8 at a time for $50-$60 for anything decent.
Recently it was brought to my attention that for what I was spending at the dispensery on an average month could get me a fair little grow tent set up, and for just what I spent in about 2 months I could get a pretty nice one. This hadn't even crossed my mind because the last time I had looked into it some 20+ years ago I had no idea about grow tents (if they were even around) and anybody I knew who had even a small grow room had thousands invested and was paying an average of $500 or so per month in electrical. I didn't realize the the cost and efficiency of all the equipment involved had evolved to the point of an indoor grow being relatively "affordable."
Redundant or not, this information brings me to my current situation; I don't know a whole lot about indoor growing and have nobody in my personal life that I can ask. I feel that doing my own research is doing me good but I have reached a crossroads where any amount of research is not helping me make the decisions I need to move forward; something I am hoping some peer to peer advice can assist with.
I have decided to go LED. It is my understanding that the hobby is at a point where there is a lot of resistance to the conversion to LED and as a saltwater reef tank keeper I completely understand that. The reef keeping hobby went through the same thing about 10 years back but pulled through it unscathed and now the folks using MH and HPS are an extreme minority; with the people using LED producing just as good quality anemones,corals, and clams as any MH/HPS setup ever did.
That being said one thing that reef keeping with LED also taught me is that the larger, more well known companies will take a light fixture worth maybe a few hundred bucks and then charge you an additional $1,000+ to add their name on it *cough ECOTECH cough* and I am seeing the same thing happening in the grow light market.
I know the best route would likely be to get on rapidled and get the stuff to build my own light system as I did with my aquarium, but I really don't have the time nor the desire for a DIY lighting project right now. What I decided to do in the meantime is order some inexpensive LED lights from amazon that seem to have good specs as far as spectrum and true wattage draw. A small part of my research was done on YouTube where I saw videos of people using a single 1,000 watt equivalent LED fixture to produce buds I would be fairly happy with in a 4x4 tent, so I purchased one of the ones I saw being used on there. This is that one: (LINK REMOVED SORRY CAN'T POST ONE YET I GUESS)
It draws right about 250 watts true power.
Then, as I did more research, I saw several threads on here recommending LED lighting for a 4x4 and several people were saying that 1 250-300w fixture and you will need actually about 600-1000 true draw watts of LED. I also was reading quite a bit about these new(ish?) COB LED's and so decided to buy two more COB fixtures rated at 300 true watts each. I was planning to run one on each side of the previous light. This is the second and third fixture(s):
(LINK REMOVED)
I might add that the reason I wanted to start with the lights is because right before I found out about the reduced cost of setting up an indoor grow I had purchased 6 DH Nursery clones for another attempt at growing outdoors. When I found out about the affordability of indoor grows these days I decided to uses those clones for an indoor grow so for now they are in my 4x2 closet, but I needed some light for them.
CHAPTER 2 - WHAT SPACE TO USE?
So now you know the thought processes that got me to this point and the pieces of equipment I have so far. As I mentioned before I was originally intrigued by the idea of a 4x4 grow tent which is what got me started along this path, but the reason I question it is because I have seen people just grow right out in the open in a spare room and produce buds I would be very happy with. I came across one video buy a YouTuber called potsquatch grower or something like that and he was producing very nice looking buds in a spare room that wasn't even white, the walls where red brick. I don't know much else about his grow other than he is growing in a brick walled spare room and pulling great looking buds.
I have a spare bedroom that has an attached spare bathroom... should I just grow in there and attach some ducting to the bathroom vent to pull air?
The walls in said bedroom are an ugly pea green but apparently that doesn't matter? In a tent the walls are reflective to bounce light that would otherwise be wasted back to the plants, correct? So if you just grow in a wide open space with no reflective surface nearby than the light that would be getting reflect back by the tent wall is just getting wasted? Does that matter though? Evidence would suggest that it doesn't matter much, if at all... so by that logic is the reflective quality of the walls in a grow tent a redundant feature?
If a tent is still the recommended way to go in my scenario, what size tent would be perfect for the light setup I have now? Should I go with my original instinct and do 4x4?
CHAPTER 3 - BUGS!
As a young whippersnapper in my 20's I kept going to school for things only to realize once I got the degree that wasn't actually what I wanted to do. This left me with several unused degrees, one of which is in entomology. I have many (read "small zoo") bio-active terrariums and paludariums in my house. In order for a completely bio-active setup of that nature to thrive you need a balance of organisms which Collembola (springtails) and isopods (rolly pollys, sawbugs etc) and some predator to keep their numbers in line. The springtails eat the mold that is near unavoidable in an enclosed and humid environment such as a paludarium, and the isopods eat any decaying matter.
I am toying with the prospect of setting up a grow tent/ terrarium hybrid fertilized by organic compost tea with a living maintenance crew. My idea would be to add the springtails and isopods which would eliminate any mold and any residual compost tea. I would then add a colony of carpenter ants which would forage the tent in small numbers, staying in their chunk of wood and only scouting in small groups of 5-10. The ants would keep the springtails and isopods numbers in check and also would harvest any mites they found. Everything would produce waste AKA frass. There are other options, for example a family of poison dart frogs would keep the numbers of all the other species in check but I don't think the tent would be getting humid enough for them? 80% or so?
I know it probably makes me sound like the Willy Wonka of indoor grows but it really is a feasible thing to accomplish... I am actually struggling to come up with a legitimate reason why it wouldn't work. For anybody who doesn't want to touch chapter 3's topic with a 10 foot pole any input on the rest would be great appreciated.
Again I am sorry for those who are rubbed the wrong way by the length of this post; I can't guarantee that is something that gets any better the longer I stick around... as someone with autism this is not only how I write but often the way I speak, which is something I have grown accustom to as pushing people away.
Thank you for your time!
