TGA Vortex 400W Stealth Grow in Supersoil

I feel your pain.

quietgardener said:

I feel your pain.

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Thanks man, yeah. I got home today and the babies are doing just fine under the 160W Hydrofarm, so I smoked a couple bowls and am feeling a lot better about things. Shit happens, and hopefully I'll find a solution tomorrow.

Peace and love,

J Dubs

It's your timer, isn't man? And don't worry about the light issue, that wasn't enough time to affect anything. You may want to worry more about the instability of subs strains as myself and others on here have noticed.

At this stage in the game, the little ladies will be happy as can be under the Hydrofarm and 24h light. Based on my experience, you've got at least 2 weeks before you need a bigger light.

After mucho strange happenings, we are now on the yellow brick road. Yesterday I potted that fourth seedling under the hydrofarm, and it's doing great. It's the same size as the other three. Yesterday afternoon I tried my ballast and lamp in three different rooms and outlets in my apartment, and nothing. Today, still thinking my ballast had issues, I took the whole setup to my favorite grow store, told them the story, and when we fired it up -- bing!!! It lit up like the 4th of July, and I felt like such a jackass. I'm a technician by trade, and a big part of my profession is electrical work, so I'm stumped. I bought a couple 10 gallon smart pots for their time, and headed back home to see what was up. Once I got home, I set everything up, routed it through the timer, and voila! Lit right up. I don't know. Either the problem was a fluke, or it is just intermittent and I'll see it again in the future. I'm gonna think positive and assume it was a fluke.

Highlanders cave said:

It's your timer, isn't man? And don't worry about the light issue, that wasn't enough time to affect anything. You may want to worry more about the instability of subs strains as myself and others on here have noticed.

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It wasn't the timer, because I plugged my Hydrofarm into the same timer and electrical run yesterday, but thanks for the tip HC. I'm keeping my ballast on the floor just outside the grow chamber, just to make access easier and keep an eye on it. And I wasn't worried about these young seedlings being too stressed. Should be cool now. I was probably more upset about thinking I may have bad brand new gear! Here's a couple updated pics, one of the the new kid in town and one of the whole gang.

I'm really starting to not like my decision to go with a digital ballast.

This morning I woke up early, and noticed once again that the light didn't come on. It's set to cut on at 4:30 AM, and I went in there at 7:00 AM and the light had not cut on. All I did was unplug the ballast cord from the timer and then plug it right back in, and it fired right up. I'm not sure what this tells me, other than I'm sick of the stupidness already. I don't know if these ballasts take a couple cycles to get broken in, or if they're just finicky with timer switching, or what, but I'm not going to turn my grow into a troubleshooting experiment to find out, so if the same thing happens tomorrow morning, I'm going to march down to the grow store and buy a magnetic ballast and just chalk this up to a learning experience. If you folks have any experience with digital ballasts and would care to comment, please do so. I know it is the ballast that is acting up, I just don't know why.

I've been doing even more research on Lumateks, and digital ballasts in general. Like many other new-fangled contraptions that are put out nowadays, these new digis have a bunch of features that are supposed to be selling points, but as a technician, I know better. Usually, when an electrical or mechanical product -- especially solid-state electronic -- has a feature outside the main point of the product, it's just one more thing that can cause problems. These Lumateks have a chip that supposedly recognizes what type of bulb you are using, and adjusts its cut-on voltage accordingly. There's also a feature that allows a certain amount of time to go by to avoid a hot re-strike of your HID bulb after power outages, input voltage fluctuation, etc, rather than firing the lamp as soon as power is reapplied. If either one of these "features" has an issue, good luck trying to troubleshoot that. They also have very strict tolerances to input voltage ranges, whereas a magnetic will fire off almost no matter what, as they fluctuate themselves anyway!! I've also seen online where people have had intermittent timer issues with these, especially with HPS bulbs. I def don't want to put up with this crap in the flowering stage after all the hard work of raising those girls, so I'm tempted to fork over the 150 or so in coin and get a magnetic anyway, just for peace of mind. No sense in skimping out now and trying to penny-pinch something so necassary. Anway, I'm going to give Lumatek a call in an hour or so. They're on West Coast time, so I'll talk to tech support and see what they have to tell me. All in all, I like what improvements in efficiency and brightness that digis have to offer, but I wonder if the technology is still too new to hop on board with yet. There seems to be a lot of different issues that people are having with them, so it may be best to wait a few years before investing too much into digis.

Do you have regular circuit breakers in your home/place or GFI's? I have GFIs in my house and every now and then the ballasts will trip them, and I have to search all around my house for the right one, and no problem......when digital ballasts first fire up, they draw more than the use on a reg basis......Hope that helps...I only use Lumatek ballasts and (knock on wood)...they've been amazing!! Glad to hear your stuff isn't broken though.....

TwooDeff425 said:

Do you have regular circuit breakers in your home/place or GFI's? I have GFIs in my house and every now and then the ballasts will trip them, and I have to search all around my house for the right one, and no problem......when digital ballasts first fire up, they draw more than the use on a reg basis......Hope that helps...I only use Lumatek ballasts and (knock on wood)...they've been amazing!! Glad to hear your stuff isn't broken though.....

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Nope, no GFI's here bro. My place is old as hell. My apt is split into two halves as far as breakers go. The kitchen/bedroom side is on a 20A breaker, and the other side is a 15A breaker. These almost never trip. I run off of a six-outlet breaker-protected power strip extension coming off of one wall outlet, and have all of my grow equipment(light, fans, carbon filter) coming off of that, so if a breaker or main outlet was a problem, I would know it, because nothing in the grow area would work. Plus, as I said earlier, these Lumateks have a chip that supposedly detects how much voltage the bulb you're using initially needs on re-strike, so the bulb is really what determines your amp draw. Thanks for the info though, as any experience helps me out. It's good to hear someone who likes their digi, as I've been reading nothing but horror stories due to the fact that I'm searching for my problem.

J Dubs

Soooo, I talked to tech support at Lumatek earlier. . . after talking with the guy, he said that although they've never had issues with Sunmasters in the past, I'm the 3rd caller in a little over a week who's had the exact same problem with brand new 400W Sunmasters and brand new Lumatek ballasts. The others all experienced the same thing as I have, which is basically the bulb firing off when it wants to. He said that he is definitely not trying to bad-mouth Sunmaster, as they're a good company with good products, but he said it's definitely a bulb issue and not a ballast issue. Since the bulb works off of the ballast, it's kind of the same thing though, isn't it?? Anyway, one of the other callers used a different bulb and had no problems since. The guy I spoke to insists that there's nothing wrong with the ballast, and that if I have more issues, I should try a different bulb and that should work fine. So, just in case I have more issues tomorrow morning, I'm going to get a Hortilux MH today, which is what I almost bought in the 1st place. Besides, bulbs don't last forever anyway, and it's good to have backups so it's money well-spent.

Hey all, just wanted to update with the good news. Yesterday when I woke up before the timer switched, I saw once again that when the timer switched to the on cycle that the Sunmaster did not work.
I removed power, switched out the Sunmaster for the Hortilux Blue I had just bought, and restored power. The Hortilux came right on, and at full brightness, it's hard to even look in the grow area! I also woke up early again this morning to make sure that the timer would fire the ballast now that the Hortilux is in there, and it did indeed, so I'm happy, the plants are happy, and hopefully the grow is back on track once and for all. As for conditions, my temp in there is 80 degrees and the humidity is at 45%. All four seedlings look great, and are working on new leaves as we speak.

Just thought I'd drop in with a couple pics and some updates. All is well and conditions are good. I cultivated the soil and watered this morning; adjusted the water from a pH of around 7 down to 6.5, and checked the water runoff of the plants at around 6.2. I got air temps at around 81, and my relative humidity hovering around 40%.
It's been exactly a week since I started those first three beans in Rapid Rooters, and right now all four young seedlings look sturdy.
Here's pics of the four;
Vortex 2 and 3 are a little taller, while 1 and 4 have more leaf development.

I've got nothing but good things to say about Hortilux bulbs. Your plants look like they're coming along nicely. July is going to be a great month!

yeah id stay away fro them digis myself strapp a little computer fan to a magnetic and u get the same basic thing better durability. Did u kno them digis arent even UL listed. id be scared to leave one alone in my house thats all im sayin. cant wait to see that vortex i got agent orange goin myself and waz thinkin of runnin vortex next.

A lot of things aren't UL listed. UL is a testing lab that charges a lot of money test a product and certify it, but they only have test protocols for certain products. I doubt most of the lights in your house are UL listed. That said, magnetic ballasts are pretty much bullet proof. The energy savings associated with electronic ballasts are there, but it may not matter to you to save 50 watts when you're burning 600-1000w. I like the fact that they're quiet, but it doesn't matter much with the fans and air pumps running 24/7.

Well we all have our own opinion. I'm just sayin even my hair clippers are UL listed.

Here's some new pics I just took. I bent them left for two days, and let them straighten back out all day yesterday. Now I'm gonna bend them right for a day or two, and then let them straighten out again. They seem to take the training well, and it really strengthens the little beauties. They're looking good and will be ready for a watering tomorrow.

J.W. said:

Here's some new pics I just took. I bent them left for two days, and let them straighten back out all day yesterday. Now I'm gonna bend them right for a day or two, and then let them straighten out again. They seem to take the training well, and it really strengthens the little beauties. They're looking good and will be ready for a watering tomorrow.

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bondage, thinks are starting to get kinky in here..
good to see ur back on track man, fark i hate those little niggling mystery problems

i have 3 jtr's and 3 3d's running first time tga grower hoping for the best i thought that sub said top the jtr well i did and when i read read the grow techs it said untopped luckly i didnt top on of them its the most vigourous little seedling lol my luck its a male even tho the last 14 beans popped only 4 have been male cha ching but its experiment time but good luck with the texs im tuned in good vibes

Thanks for the support folks, and for participating in my thread. I'm glad I'm back on track as well. These little Vortexes are going to be my pride and joy this summer -- or one of them will be, anyway.
I'm a little torn still on when I'm going to narrow down my pheno choice for the keeper, but I'm hoping that in due time that the problem will naturally take care of itself. I just wish I had a bigger space to flower in!
Oh well -- in a couple years, hopefully I'll own my own house and have a nice-sized space for a complete professional grow area. Gotta have dreams. . . .

J Dubs