1st time grower - critique my setup t5 :)

Hi guys, I'm a first time grower, growing out of my 1 bedroom apartment. The place is about 900 sq feet and my bedroom is pretty large and I will be throwing up an agromax 3x3x6 in the corner. I'm trying to go for the least amount of fans necessary ( since it's in my bedroom, I want to keep noise to a minimum ) and thought T5 would be the route to go due to its general low heat production. I understand HPS is the way to go for the yield, but honestly, it's just me and a few buddies smoking this stuff, we don't mind a 10-30 percent yield reduction.

With that being said. Since I only have 3 feet to work with, I'm going to grab a 2' 8 bulb T5 fixture for the top which will be on a harness of some sort that I can lower onto 4 plants. That would be approximately 2k X 8 or ~16k Lumen. I was then thinking I could grab a 4' 2 bulb fixtures on each of the sides as side panels. That would be approximately 5k X 8 or ~40k Lumen, for a combined 56k lumen. This would all be for the flowering stage. I would probably go with much less for veg.

At the very minimum, what type of ventilation / cooling will I need for something like this?

With 56k Lumen, will it be ALMOST as good as a 400 w HPS? if you had to guess, if everything else was constant, I would yield maybe 10-20 percent less with this setup as opposed to a 400 w HPS setup?

Also, anyone know ~what my plant yield will be (dry) per plant (white rhino) ? Me and a buddy are trying to figure out if 4 plants are enough for our own personal consumption.

Thanks again

dictate, welcome to RIU. I have some experience with t5 in tent so here we go. Since you are in an apartment you are going to have to be very careful about the odor. I have not grown white rhino but, have read others who said that there is a pretty strong skunk smell. I would consider something else, maybe Northern Lights. If you put the lights on the side you are going to limit the space, the plants in my tent always touch the sides. Don't veg for very long because the lights are only going to get the top 12-18 inches well and the plants may double or triple in size after you go 12/12. You don't say if you are going with soil or hydro, whatever your set up is going to be put it in the tent with basil or something and run it at 18/6 for a few days. What happens to the temps and RH? You will need enough airflow to get the temps and RH where you want them, this all depends on the conditions of your bedroom. My experience is the lamps will push temps 8-10 deg in the tent. When I run my dehumid it pushes room temps 5-7 deg. You will want low RH for the flower stage. If you are going to run a stink filter and I suspect that you will, that will require more airflow. Good luck with whatever you land on!

ow.douglas said:

dictate, welcome to RIU. I have some experience with t5 in tent so here we go. Since you are in an apartment you are going to have to be very careful about the odor. I have not grown white rhino but, have read others who said that there is a pretty strong skunk smell. I would consider something else, maybe Northern Lights. If you put the lights on the side you are going to limit the space, the plants in my tent always touch the sides. Don't veg for very long because the lights are only going to get the top 12-18 inches well and the plants may double or triple in size after you go 12/12. You don't say if you are going with soil or hydro, whatever your set up is going to be put it in the tent with basil or something and run it at 18/6 for a few days. What happens to the temps and RH? You will need enough airflow to get the temps and RH where you want them, this all depends on the conditions of your bedroom. My experience is the lamps will push temps 8-10 deg in the tent. When I run my dehumid it pushes room temps 5-7 deg. You will want low RH for the flower stage. If you are going to run a stink filter and I suspect that you will, that will require more airflow. Good luck with whatever you land on!

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My neighbors are pretty "smell" friendly, my next door neighbor comes over for smokes every now and then. My bed room door is about 20 feet from the main door of my apartment which leads into the hallway. I have a smaller closet maybe 2.5x 3 which is covered by the bed room door. My plan is to keep the closet door ajar and exhaust air into there with a carbon filter from the tent. I'm going to keep an air ionizer in the room as well and auto release room deodorants. So hopefully, hopefullllyyyy those 3 things will keep a slight odor to just my bed room. I smoked a batch of rhino that my buddy got the other day and now i'm hellbent on having some if my own

I'm a first time grower, so i'll probably just stick with soil (fox farms ocean) and am also going to add a few fox farm nutes. Now that you bring up not being able to have side t5 panels to bring up the lumen, I may have to go the HPS route but I really don't want to have to deal with keeping the heat low. A 2' 8 Bulb T5 is only droppin ~16k Lumens. I'm in a 3x3 grow space and probably will try to fit 4 3 gallon pots (maybe 5), so I'm not sure what you all recommend. That's a good idea with the basil though, will have to do acouple practice runs.

I'm also contemplating going the auto route, being that this is my first grow. What I ultimately may end up doing is planting like 5-6 Autos and harvesting in 2.5 months to have a sizable smoke stash (sick of paying 120 a 1/4 here in the midwest). hearing the Dinafem WW and Afghan Kush Ryder were 2 high yielding autos with great potency.


Thank you for the 411!! Much Appreciated

So I was bored earliar, anxiously waiting for my seeds to arrive. I decided to diagram my 3'x3' setup with T5 and CFL setup. I want to get the 4' T5 but my tent is only 3' long. I will hang it vertically as a side lighting (as seen in the diagram). Then I'm thinking either 4 55 w or 1 250 CFL to provide another 11k Lumen up top. Planning on dropping that bad boy within inches of the plants. I'm going to do a 6 3 gallon Afgan Kush Low Ryder Auto.

Do you think the T5 will provide sufficient lighting from the side? I plan on rotating the position of the plants often.

Oops the little black circle on the bottom left is another oscillating fan.

I would still hang the T5 from the top, there is only going to 6" on either side if you center it. If you want to use the CFL's to help make a frame that will ride on top of T5, the CFL will cover the 6" at either end 1-2 per side. It will raise and lower as a unit. There are good DIY plans for CFL reflectors here. One clip fan should be good in a 3x3 but, you will need a good exhaust fan with a passive intake to move fresh air thru the tent. Just my thoughts...