Went from T5s to HPS for veg

I got 6 clones from a local cannabis club for week 1 I was using a 4000 lumen t5 2' 2 bulb fixture and then I went out and bought a 40000 lumen 4' 8 bulb fixture because the first light wasn't enough for 6 plants anyways I vegged under the 40000 lumen t5s for week 2 and 3 and I felt like I was getting slow growth so I recently(2days ago) moved and transplanted my plants to 5gal smart pots and moved to my flowering tent(600hps air cooled 5x5x6.5 tent) but still kept it on veg lighting(18-6). The plants are about 8-10 inches tall and they just hit week 3 today. I overwatered one time when I was in week 2 (due to being used to outdoor growing) and it took a few days for the leaves to perk back up. One of the plants still has curled leaves and those leaves never recovered all the new growth on it looks good tho. I am current keeping the plants 20" away from the HPS light. Do they look okay? Anything I could do to improve the growth? How tall should I let them get before I switch to flower? any tips or help would be highly appreciated it

Pic 1 is the first day I got them pic 2 was 1week old pic 3 is 2weeks old pic 4 was today at 3 weeks old

EDIT
I only feed a qtr strength of veg nutes one time and they were in 1 gallon smart pots before i transplants if I left anything else out please let me know! Thank you

BUmp

I can't answer any of your questions since I'm pretty new to this myself. I've got 5 I've grown from seed that are in week 5 of veg and just swapped the light cycle over to 12/12 to start flowering. They look just a little bigger than yours in the last picture. The few I've done before I let go for almost 2 months of veg and they ended up about 2-3 ft tall and yielded about 4 oz or so but there were only 2-3 plants in that batch so I considered it a learning process. I'm flipping mine earlier just cause I'm relying on some crappy dirt weed from an old dealer till I can get mine finished.

They look good to me man, good luck!

Ment to add that I also use t5s and have swapped to my Hps in the last few days and am seeing a huge boost in growth but it's probably from the stretch starting. I love my t5s but mainly use them for vegging. No real reason other than it's better for my lightbill

Yes im starting to see the stretch happen with vegging under the HPS, how many inches where your plants before you switched to 12/12? I wanna make sure I fill my grow room so I don't want to flower until my plants hit atleast 15 inches because I heard they double sometimes triple in size

I feel like the plant size versus planter size helped slow the growth as well, but light is light to a vegging plant... sure color temp can mess with stretching and node distance, etc. but lots of bright light is the important thing...

I like the T5's for small plants, anything under 12"-15".... above that 400w or 600w metal halide...

Always remember tho, lumens is for fools, its just a big number to put on the box to look pretty. Wattage equivalence is the exact same story... ignore that shit. Worry about intensity versus foliar growth. Fluorescent lights are getting all of about 2 inches of light penetration through the leaf canopy... 1000w HPS is closer to like 18"

If your plants get more than a couple layers thick in leaves, or tall enough to shade itself, you have 2 supplement light on the sides.....

Stick with MH/HPS with plants more than a foot tall....

Flagg420 said:

I feel like the plant size versus planter size helped slow the growth as well, but light is light to a vegging plant... sure color temp can mess with stretching and node distance, etc. but lots of bright light is the important thing...

I like the T5's for small plants, anything under 12"-15".... above that 400w or 600w metal halide...

Always remember tho, lumens is for fools, its just a big number to put on the box to look pretty. Wattage equivalence is the exact same story... ignore that shit. Worry about intensity versus foliar growth. Fluorescent lights are getting all of about 2 inches of light penetration through the leaf canopy... 1000w HPS is closer to like 18"

If your plants get more than a couple layers thick in leaves, or tall enough to shade itself, you have 2 supplement light on the sides.....

Stick with MH/HPS with plants more than a foot tall....

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I thought I would get faster growth starting in smaller pots? Would I still need side lighting if im using the HPS to veg and only letting the plant get 15" to 18" max. If it gets too bushy I could prune or LST

MH/HPS will give u plenty of light penetration.

If you just threw them directly under an hps from a t5 then just make sure they don't stress out and droop and your good to go. if you see light saturation or drooping then back the light up a bit

Sam1510 said:

Yes im starting to see the stretch happen with vegging under the HPS, how many inches where your plants before you switched to 12/12? I wanna make sure I fill my grow room so I don't want to flower until my plants hit atleast 15 inches because I heard they double sometimes triple in size

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I believe they were around 12-13in when I first switched, maybe a little bigger but not 15. They've been under the Hps on 12/12 for nearly 5 days now. Here are a few quick pics from last night.


Dunno if I mentioned I'm going cheap cheap on this one. 2$ bag of off season wal mart "organic planting soil" with my leftover fox farms trio and just plain well water that's usually a little on the higher end of 6-7 on the ph scale last I checked it last year. 2 on the left front and back are bagseed that I think are gonna be males for some reason.
The 3 on the right are NYPD from Nirvana that I really liked and thought did well on a previous grow.

Post more later

Sam1510 said:

I thought I would get faster growth starting in smaller pots? Would I still need side lighting if im using the HPS to veg and only letting the plant get 15" to 18" max. If it gets too bushy I could prune or LST

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I start in solo cups then go to three gal pots then 5 gal buckets if they get over 2-3ft before flowering. I'm 6'3 and had a bagseed hit just below my chest/diaphragm area before chopping her. I do side lighting just because I don't think my 600hps is quite enough sometimes. Usually use my t5 as supplemental.

I'm not sure if I did it right but I FIM popped last time and was happy with the results. I really want to figure out an easy way to a Screen of green but my engineering skills are sadly lacking.

Cheers!

Just checked and they are 10 -12in, temps running a little hot but I did just get the door opened only 30 min after lights on. Should cool right on off with the door open to 50 degree weather outside.

These will be the shortest time I've ever spent in vegging, just over 4 weeks from putting into soil. But I've got a new batch of 9 seedlings in the back I popped from some bomb mid homegrown a buddy hooked me up with already sprouting.

I did some LST the other night there reacting good to it so far! Im im between week 3-4 and im thinking I should switch to 12/12 next week. The plants are currently 8-11 inches tall. I want to yield atleast 12ozs off my 600w. I just want to make sure I fill my tent up(5x5x6.5) and not have any extra space so im scared to flower too early so I don't lost yield/potential in the plants. All of my plants look good except for the one in the middle bottom row.

Definitely overwatering. Use the finger depth method. If it feels damp with your big knuckle in the soil then give it another day. Also that tight growth is because of how close you had the lights. Pull that HPS away and get that internodal stretch that allows for better branching. Unless you want them as dwarfs. Otherwise they look good. Overwatering will slow growth quite a bit. Also raise the temp and humidity. 75-80 and 60% humidity is best for veg. If you veg under 75 degrees you'll get much closer nodes. Remember that cannabis is called weed for a reason. Let it stress a little. Dry and warm is better than wet and cold.

ganja361 said:

Definitely overwatering. Use the finger depth method. If it feels damp with your big knuckle in the soil then give it another day. Also that tight growth is because of how close you had the lights. Pull that HPS away and get that internodal stretch that allows for better branching. Unless you want them as dwarfs. Otherwise they look good. Overwatering will slow growth quite a bit. Also raise the temp and humidity. 75-80 and 60% humidity is best for veg. If you veg under 75 degrees you'll get much closer nodes. Remember that cannabis is called weed for a reason. Let it stress a little. Dry and warm is better than wet and cold.

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Thank you so much for that info it's very useful. How far do you recommend I keep my 600w HPS light away from the plants to get that good stretch and node distance?

18-24 inches is fine for veg. After the stretch is done in flower, lower your light in 2 inch increments until you finally see stress and then back it up to the previous spot. Some people flower at 10-12"

I've moved on to ceramic lights. No comparison to old HPS technology. Half the heat, half the amp draw, 4 times the bulb life, better penetration, better coloring and terpene production. You name it. I keep my ceramics 3 ft from the canopy and still don't get popcorn nugs.

Okay cool a lot of my plants are almost 12 inches so would you recommend I flower now since I only have 5 feet of head room max(from the bottom of my hood to the floor of the tent) in my 5x5x6.5' tent so I think my plants can only get 3 to 3 1/2 feet tall max

ganja361 said:

18-24 inches is fine for veg. After the stretch is done in flower, lower your light in 2 inch increments until you finally see stress and then back it up to the previous spot. Some people flower at 10-12"

I've moved on to ceramic lights. No comparison to old HPS technology. Half the heat, half the amp draw, 4 times the bulb life, better penetration, better coloring and terpene production. You name it. I keep my ceramics 3 ft from the canopy and still don't get popcorn nugs.

Click to expand...

ganja361 said:

18-24 inches is fine for veg. After the stretch is done in flower, lower your light in 2 inch increments until you finally see stress and then back it up to the previous spot. Some people flower at 10-12"

I've moved on to ceramic lights. No comparison to old HPS technology. Half the heat, half the amp draw, 4 times the bulb life, better penetration, better coloring and terpene production. You name it. I keep my ceramics 3 ft from the canopy and still don't get popcorn nugs.

Click to expand...

Here is a pic of them today

Sam1510 said:

Okay cool a lot of my plants are almost 12 inches so would you recommend I flower now since I only have 5 feet of head room max(from the bottom of my hood to the floor of the tent) in my 5x5x6.5' tent so I think my plants can only get 3 to 3 1/2 feet tall max

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I personally would keep topping them and make them into bushes. Right now you may only get 2-6 oz. You should be able to get a lb if done properly.

ganja361 said:

I personally would keep topping them and make them into bushes. Right now you may only get 2-6 oz. You should be able to get a lb if done properly.

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I would be pretty upset if I got 2-6 ozs ima just keep LST and topping so they bush out more. Probably veg for another week or 2 huh? Someone on another post mentioned that I should switch back to my t5 4' 8 bulb(432w total) for better veg growth. What do u think?

ganja361 said:

Definitely overwatering. Use the finger depth method. If it feels damp with your big knuckle in the soil then give it another day. Also that tight growth is because of how close you had the lights. Pull that HPS away and get that internodal stretch that allows for better branching. Unless you want them as dwarfs. Otherwise they look good. Overwatering will slow growth quite a bit. Also raise the temp and humidity. 75-80 and 60% humidity is best for veg. If you veg under 75 degrees you'll get much closer nodes. Remember that cannabis is called weed for a reason. Let it stress a little. Dry and warm is better than wet and cold.

Click to expand...

Was thinking the same thing about lamp hieght. Make them reach a little for it!