My Setup ..:: What am I doing right/wrong ::..

This is my very first set up, I read a bunch of threads, searched a bunch of topics, and decided to pull out my wallet, jump balls deep and learn from error.

So equipment

Main tent:
4X4X7 Grow Tent
600w HPS bulb
Wing hood
1875w ballast
and some shit 15 dollar box walmart fan

Germination/Clone shelf:

a 23'' by 13'' 4 t5 bulb fixture
4 t5 bulbs
tray and plastic covering to replicate a propagator and keep humidity in/


Pictures:

Ok let me preface this by saying I know alot of this is probably wrong, laughable, and just plain dangerous the way I have it set up. This is my raw set up with no instruction and me taking a swing at it, and I am assuming after this thread kicks off I will probably end up redoing everything for maximization of marijuanization.

LET US BEGIN
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This is where my 6 inch intack fan is, I have some extention cords running beside it but how the flap is getting pulled in I can tell that means its pulling out more air then is coming into the room so I need to do somerhing to fix this

Ducts on top, no Idea what to do with them, pic on the right is the cord to my temperture meter/hygromete

Nice walmart box fan yo
View attachment 1937452View attachment 1937454
Healthyish/kinda stunted plants

Both look like they had completely died at some point, all plants planted at same time but recently they started coming back to life


Air duct started unraveleing when I was pulling it out QQ

Germination table/Supplies table. Pictures at the end is of the whole area, its at the back part of my garage which is exposed to outside




Thats it, any question to clarify anything ask, many laughs are probably about to be had at my expense, and im ok with that. All help is repped and greatly appreciated this isnt something I plan on doing once and quitting, this is just the beginning. I want to do this for the rest of my life if I can, I love tending to the plants and watching the grow.

Ok considering you're using pretty much the exact setup i'm using i can probably give you a few pin pointers.

I wouldn't advise growing 4 plants in that one room with only 600w hps (Considering that's as high as you can go). The plants really fight for that light and usually 2 of them will be left out, and the other 2 will continue fighting and you'll recieve the same yeild as you would if you say grew 1 or 2 in there.

You're running a 6" intake at the the bottom, which is good but what about the exhaust? Surely you have something pulling that hot air out?
Them tents get FUCKING hot in summer, you can't rely on just pushing that hot air out. You need to have an exhaust fan at the top where them duct holes are sucking the hot air out, and when it's time you place a carbon filter on it to kill any smell released by them lovely buds.

What's that ducting at the bottom leading to?
If it's connected to your intake it's pretty pointless atm and should be used on your exhaust ducting the air outside or something.

What temps are you looking at in the room when the lights are on?


Hope i have provided you with some decent insight
and btw your 2 bigger babies are looking rather nice.
The 2 little ones are they getting fed nutes?

I only have 3 suggestions 1) Remove everything you can that is not necessary to the grow from the grow area and clean. I mean really clean with a bleach solution and all. This will help keep the critters away. 2) Not a biggie but for me I would move the light ballast outaide the tent and set it on a cinder block or something. 3) And from your post you already know, get better ventilation fans. Other than that as you continue, I am sure you will learn and see the changes you want too make. Good Luck!

Unless it is really cold, get your ballast out of the tent and certainly get it off the floor, ya gonna wind up dead before you get going.

Your ventilation. Passive inlet at the bottom port, extractor at the top port as heat rises. Put them on opposite sides of the tent to draw clean fresh air across your tent. negative pressure (sides pulling in) is a good thing, it means smelly air is not getting out. I don't see a carbon filter of extractor fan, if ya dont have one, ya gonna need one.

Propergator looks good, good humidity and I assume a heat mat under there.

Not sure if there is anything in those empty pots under the hps, if its new sprouts then get them under the T5 not hps.

Apart from that, nothing wrong, ya lookin good to me. Time for nutes some time soon on bigger plant. Can't advise much more without info on soil and nutes etc etc. A must have is superthrive for stress(everywater), rhizotonic to look after them roots and some decent veg + flower nutes. Ya might also wonna think about getting your bug / defficiency arsenal ready. CALMAG, Nitrogen mono, plant vitality will take care of the more common issues.

Good luck kidda.....

Fuck me I'm typing slow tonight, 2 answers posted whist typing makes me look like a bit of a nob.

Alright, I have used that exact tent to grow aswell... Choofy and bkb had some good info for you. I agree with them in most of what they said. You definately have to tackle ventilation. In a perfect world you should have negative pressure in your room. meaning its like a vacum and the walls will in-pull slightly from the pressure. To avoid any mold and allow your plants to stay cool and breath, you should be replacing the air in the room around 20 times per/hr. That means a 6inch inline sucking the hot air out of the room and definately into a carbon filter unless smell is of no consequence. Also, Cleanliness is very important to successfull growing.
a few questions that may allow me to give you some more info; what strain are you growing? and are you flowering right now or still vegging?

Listen to both of them with ballast tip, them ballasts let off rather alot of heat.

and Mcilroy i can almost gurantee his not flowering!

I appreciate all the fantastic advice and let me clear somethings up.

The "intake" fan I am actually using as exhaust thats why there is a duct on it, so you're saying I should be the exhaust to the top? I actually have 2 themometers in there, the one handing from the time, and the white wireless peice you see in there.

Temperature at pot level is 86, temp at top is 80. Temp outside tent is 71. Obviously a ventilation issue, I should probably buy another 6 in intake and this time use it as intake instead of exhaust, when I was ordering the fan I was told all I needed was exhaust and it would create a negeative pressure and pull the air in and everything would be chill. But if this was the case im assuming there wouldnt be a 15 degree temperature difference.

Next:

Regarding nutes and what not:
This is what I ordered just came in, I mixed some of the big bloom in with a pitcher of water and fed the plants last night


And as far as pest control. Good point I really have no preparation and suggestions would be good, also suggestion on what items to buy for ventilation is appreciated im ready to hit up amazon right now, I was thinking a 6 inch clip on fan to hang from the top but really don't know what else.

Also no, no heating mat, but thats a very good point. When it gets cold I know I will have an issue with the germination set up and temperature which I should probably address soon.


And as far as the 4 plants. There was 5 all started at the same time and 3 had "died" off but I left them in there because I am a rebel, one shrivled up and went away so I took it out, the other two are struggling to come back to life and I am going to put them into the germination area thats a very good suggestion.


Also as far as room goes, Thats fine. I am actually going to build a 10x10 grow room in my barn, build the frame out of 2x4 then grab some reflective mylar to use as the walls. So that isnt really a concern for me, I plan on using the tent for mother plants/germination.

Edit: Regarding the ballast, I put it in the tent because if its outside its pretty much exposed to all the dust in the air and everything, thats the back part of a garage with just a roof over it, no walls everything else is exposed to the outside if you look at the pictures where I am standing away. But there is a barbaque pit next to the tent im not using and I am going to try and put the ballast in the storage section of the pit and see how that works off, get some heat out of that tent. It also wasnt an issue because it was in the 50s and 40s here so I had the exact opposite issue it was getting into the 50s and 60s in the tent so I bought a heater and put it in the tent. But texas being texas temp went back up to 70s and 80s so now these are becoming issues.

Mcciloy: I am vegging, these are plants I jacked up off the start they are actually a month and 2 weeks old, even the small ones. But had numerous issues that I addressed and they are slowly paying off. I am growing white widow but I also have 3 hawaii mawuii in the germination area right now I plan on moving into there

Edit edit: I am going to go clean everything right now, remove all the plants , vacuum everything up, use bleach to scrub and put plants back in. Good advice I am learning alot tonight. Keep it rolling in

You don't need an inlet fan for a tent that size, passive inlet is fine eg.... a decent exhaust fan 500cfm will create negative pressure and draw fresh air in through the lower inlet ports. Exhaust fan will bring temps right down. PLANT VITALITY (ebay) for mites and flies. ebay £10-15. Ony feed the bigger plant, young un's don't need yet.

Ballast all depends on what you think is right, it can work as heater if you need extra heat inside your tent.

You're exhaust should be up top for sure! Heat rises and you need to suck the heat out. You definantly need an intake but, passive intake just doesn't cut it when you need to control the temp in a 1x1 tent. And the duct shouldn't be exhausting the air into the same room you're taking air from, should be outside or something.

MrMeanGreen said:

You don't need an inlet fan for a tent that size, passive inlet is fine eg.... a decent exhaust fan 500cfm will create negative pressure and draw fresh air in through the lower inlet ports. Exhaust fan will bring temps right down. PLANT VITALITY (ebay) for mites and flies. ebay £10-15. Ony feed the bigger plant, young un's don't need yet.

Click to expand...

This is the exact fan I have and I am using it as an exhaust, I dont have direct pictures of the fan it selfs, but I have the picture of the hole the fan is in, and you see cables running out of it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YFADW8/ref=oh_o01_s01_i00_details

Also, is this what you're talking about?

http://www.plantvitalityplus.info/

ChoofyN said:

Ballast all depends on what you think is right, it can work as heater if you need extra heat inside your tent.

You're exhaust should be up top for sure! Heat rises and you need to suck the heat out. You definantly need an intake but, passive intake just doesn't cut it when you need to control the temp in a 1x1 tent. And the duct shouldn't be exhausting the air into the same room you're taking air from, should be outside or something.

Click to expand...

Take a look at the pictures from me standing far away, the entire area is outside. This is the back part of a garage with only 2 walls, a back wall and side wall. The rest is directly open to the great out doors so I am assuming with that wherever I exhaust into isnt that big of a deal. But what I don't understand and why I have the exhaust on the bottom is according to the thermometers the temperature near bottom is 85-86 and temp at plant level is 80. Only thing I can thing of is since I am handing the light so low at the moment

ChoofyN said:

Ballast all depends on what you think is right, it can work as heater if you need extra heat inside your tent.

You're exhaust should be up top for sure! Heat rises and you need to suck the heat out. You definantly need an intake but, passive intake just doesn't cut it when you need to control the temp in a 1x1 tent. And the duct shouldn't be exhausting the air into the same room you're taking air from, should be outside or something.

Click to expand...

Sorry dude but I run 1800w with a passive inlet without problems. The bottom ine is if the exhaust is pulling 500 m3 of air / hour then 500m3 / hour must come in wether it through passive intake or other holes.

I agree with your other point of good clean fresh air in and stale hot air well away. Very important.

Also if you have fuctuating temps then get a controller for your exhaust fan, up full when warm and down ow when cold, it will be your best friend to control temps throughout the year.

Ya fan is a booster, ya might struggle a bit with that.

MrMeanGreen said:

Sorry dude but I run 1800w with a passive inlet without problems. The bottom ine is if the exhaust is pulling 500 m3 of air / hour then 500m3 / hour must come in wether it through passive intake or other holes.

I agree with your other point of good clean fresh air in and stale hot air well away. Very important.

Also if you have fuctuating temps then get a controller for your exhaust fan, up full when warm and down ow when cold, it will be your best friend to control temps throughout the year.

Ya fan is a booster, ya might struggle a bit with that.

Click to expand...

What do you mean "Ya fan is a booster"? I'm not too familiar with the lingo haha

Also what exactly should I get to help with ventilation?

Roflicer said:

What do you mean "Ya fan is a booster"? I'm not too familiar with the lingo haha

Click to expand...

The purpose of a booster fan is to assist main fan usaually over longer ducted distances, they are not built for the initial work load only to boost already moving air.

But i grow in the exact same tent he does with 600w hps also, and trust me passive inlet is nothing. Maybe it's because i grow in western australia and it's summer right now the temps are always 30 degrees + .. It's just like growing outdoors in afghan lol.

If your always getting new air in the shed then it shouldn't be to much of a biggie.

The heat down the bottom is caused by the reflector pretty much reflecting the heat straight down, and a mix of your lights pretty low. This is where an intake fan at the bottom will help keep the hot air up and escaping out the top.

so should I just take the intake...and turn it around lol?

Can you link a fan I should buy?

And so should I return the one I linked?

Well you really should have exhaust at the top if you're using one fan, it really does help having an intake at the bottom though. I'm no expert though so there's many different ways it can be done and probably better.

http://www.aussieponics.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=168 - A fan like that as your exhaust at top (With a carbon filter)

http://www.aussieponics.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=489 - A fan like that as your intake at the bottom.

DO NOT BUY FROM THAT WEBSITE BTW, THEY ARE JUST EXAMPLES OF WHAT FANS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR TENT.

Time to go amazon diving

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HYDROPONICS-4-EXTRACTOR-DUCT-FAN-CARBON-FILTER-KIT-/270806707378?pt=UK_HomeGarden_Garden_PlantsSeedsBulbs_JN&hash=item3f0d566cb2

This kit would be just right for your size tent although I woud always advise people to go into overkill on the fan and fiter in case you ever upgrade. Nothing worse than all your current equipment going on the shelf and having to repace it all with bigger and better. Go big and use controller to adjust to your needs, when you need big you got big. Big is below

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HYDROPONICS-4-EXTRACTOR-DUCT-FAN-CARBON-FILTER-KIT-/270806707378?pt=UK_HomeGarden_Garden_PlantsSeedsBulbs_JN&hash=item3f0d566cb2

To be honest, I woud send the booster back if ya can.

Yeah I already claimed the return, its only like 25 bucks but oh well better than nothing. Btw you linked the same link twice. Did you mean to do that?


edit: just fount out I have to pay 12 bucks for the return shipping, ill just keep it, it does like 240 cm or whateves im sure I will find a use for it eventually