800 watts of cfls pics (should I switch to hps??)

nycfunguy

nycfunguy

Active Member
I've been reading for months... started my first grow aeroponically. GH three part nutes, no additives, just balanced ph, tds around 400 max for this one plant.

a few seeds, maybe light leaks not sure...

a few questions: I'm at 14 weeks and the trichomes still look clear... a few red but not a majority of them are cloudy. that's what I want. I've heard sativas can take up to 16 weeks... thought for sure mine would be done.

1. I'm using 38 23 watt cfls on this. from the pics they should have been sideways but there were so many in a 1 1/5 by 2 space. SHOULD I SWITCH TO HPS for less wattage or do these buds look thick?

2. This is a haze plant, should there be small buds growing out of the sides of the main bud? I've scrogged these so maybe the sideways growth is from this type of setup?

3. please check the next few posts for the other pics. I'm at a internet cafe and need to post and run. notice that in one of the pics, the smaller bulbs that haven't opened have more trichs (and the color is cloudy) than the other buds that have opened. Is this normal? These branches used to be below the fan leaves and may not have matured the way they should?

4. The seeds that I'm finding here and there... female or herm? I did not have any males in here and am wondering how in the hell those seeds got there?

5. when flushing this out... 3 days or go for a week... I'm doing aero...
 

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xxfeareffectxx

xxfeareffectxx

Active Member
what you have is a lack of light,yes you need hps.otherwise looks good!The "fingers"on the bud is from lack of light.
just my view.
 
nycfunguy

nycfunguy

Active Member
Here are the other pics... they are probably all out of order due to my time restrictions...

anyway... the biggest question is... should I be switching to 400 watt HPS? There should be 60,800 lumens here as compared to the 55,000 lumens on a HPS light from what I've read.

I was going to switch the whole cab lengthwise and spread the cfls out over 4 feet or so... any ideas? are these buds (sorry for the crappy images) thick nugs or no? That main cola with the lighter looks very strange...
 

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nycfunguy

nycfunguy

Active Member
xxfeareffectxx said:
what you have is a lack of light,yes you need hps.otherwise looks good!The "fingers"on the bud is from lack of light.
just my view.
Click to expand...
did you see the other pics after your post... they are from much later in the grow... like last week... week 13... not sure what fingers you're talking about? will a 400 hps have more lumens than these? like I mentioned 60,800 lumens?
 
nikk

nikk

Active Member
xxfeareffectxx said:
what you have is a lack of light,yes you need hps.otherwise looks good!The "fingers"on the bud is from lack of light.
just my view.
Click to expand...

what the hell are you talking about....the fingers on the bud is from lack....stfu with that nonsense


first off lemme congratulate the grower...good shit,i love the set up....as for you needing an hps...no not necessarily...for a couple of plants cfl's are more than adequate....800 watts of light is good no matter what...the only thing i could recommend for you to do is put those lights closer to the plants and surround the plant with those cfl's try to have "even" brightness on the plant...what i mean by that is try "NOT" to leave any leaves "dim",if possible try to put the lights about 4 inches apart....all over the plant for evenly distributed light output...other than that keep up the good work and happy growing

....nikkz
 
nikk

nikk

Active Member
nikk said:
what the hell are you talking about....the fingers on the bud is from lack....stfu with that nonsense


first off lemme congratulate the grower...good shit,i love the set up....as for you needing an hps...no not necessarily...for a couple of plants cfl's are more than adequate....800 watts of light is good no matter what...the only thing i could recommend for you to do is put those lights closer to the plants and surround the plant with those cfl's try to have "even" brightness on the plant...what i mean by that is try "NOT" to leave any leaves "dim",if possible try to put the lights about 4 inches apart....all over the plant for evenly distributed light output...other than that keep up the good work and happy growing

....nikkz
Click to expand...
you plants look nice and bushy...and the scrog could be the reason that you have extra growth near the nodes due to light reaching parts that normally wouldnt see much light due to the canopy...but your plants look good and bushy and healthy....dont over water and dont over nute....and when in doubt just top off with ph'd water,im sorry i cant help you further as far as them going herm...but the one thing i DO know is make sure ) light enters the grow area during lights out time and that should prevent them going herm
 
nycfunguy

nycfunguy

Active Member
thanks for the positive feedback... as a first time grower I'm always convinced I'm doing it wrong...

they are 14 weeks in... this is normal right? I want to get a shot of the trics but it seems that some of the bulbs are red, the stem is clear... most of the trics look clear but I'm trying to get cloudy... I assume I should take this sativa (haze) 2 more weeks?


also, note that the cfls are behind a thin layer of plexiglass... can't put them any closer or they'll flatten out the bud tops.. (unless this isn't a bad thing? with 800 watts though, the glass does get hot... there's a fan in there sucking air out... but it's still a lot of watts. I guess I'm asking about the 400 watts hps because it'd be less watts and slightly less lumens. Better electrical consumption though...

I've heard that seeds from females are female? Or herm? Or I'm way off and nothing is predetermined?
 
nycfunguy

nycfunguy

Active Member
yeah, I think I'll have to redesign this thing for the next one if I do it again... the glass is helping tremendously from keeping the heat of all those cfls off the plant. if I take the glass off everything in there would burn... the fan is sucking as much air out as it's capable of but with a stronger fan it might work. the light distribution is quite even...

just thought that with that many cfls it would have to penetrate better than just a few placed within the branches... I'm sure I'm wrong... it is incredibly bright in there...
 
420tintin

420tintin

Member
Yes i would definetly get a Hps wether its a 400 or a 600. you dont have to mess around with as many items and the nugs are way denser. As for lumens i read an article explaining how lumens are what the human eye sees and is not necessarily what the plant needs. The KELVIN rating is what your looking for. if your using cfls you wnat a higher like 6000 rating for veging and for flower you want lower like 2500. Its best to have a couple higher rated kelvin bulbs in with a majority low rated kelvin bulbs. the article i read was called Lumens Are For Humans and read it in a mag from my hydro store. The higher rated kelvin bulbs are bluer and the lower rated one are red. you can really tell the difference when you have them on side by side. remember low like 2500kelvin for flower and higher like 6000kelvin for veging
 
420tintin

420tintin

Member
it just looks like you have high rated kelvin bulbs in there that are lackin the red spectrum that a lower kelvin rated bulb would have. also they cost the exact same
 
nycfunguy

nycfunguy

Active Member
no no, I'm doing the kelvins right.. just looks that way in the pics..

I'm using 8 6500 bulbs and 30 2700 bulbs. And from what I'm seeing the nugs look really dense but like I said... never done this before.
 
nikk

nikk

Active Member
nycfunguy said:
thanks for the positive feedback... as a first time grower I'm always convinced I'm doing it wrong...

they are 14 weeks in... this is normal right? I want to get a shot of the trics but it seems that some of the bulbs are red, the stem is clear... most of the trics look clear but I'm trying to get cloudy... I assume I should take this sativa (haze) 2 more weeks?


also, note that the cfls are behind a thin layer of plexiglass... can't put them any closer or they'll flatten out the bud tops.. (unless this isn't a bad thing? with 800 watts though, the glass does get hot... there's a fan in there sucking air out... but it's still a lot of watts. I guess I'm asking about the 400 watts hps because it'd be less watts and slightly less lumens. Better electrical consumption though...

I've heard that seeds from females are female? Or herm? Or I'm way off and nothing is predetermined?
Click to expand...
well as for the hps...the hps is always going to give off more lumens...but thats not really important,what is important tho is to make sure you have both spectrums...warm 2700k for flowering and cool 6500k for vegging...but my little secret is to give the plants both...because cfl's have true color spectrum that the plants need....hps only has a small percentage of the right spectrum and 90% of the yellow spectrum which the plant doesnt use...so in my book cfl's are the way to go...not to mention stealth and heat output...and as for the seeds,lemme first explain a process called selfing,when we force our plants to herm(due to lighting stress among other things)those same seeds will have hermaphodite tendencies and you could really throw the genetics for a loop,but selfing does away with those tendencies because it happens naturally in nature,you see by letting the plant flower longer,the plants have a built in mechanism which tells it that in order to forward the species it has to essentially impregnate itself by creating male flowers or else die...so the best way to self a plant is to clone her while she is in veg and putting both plants to flower when they are ready,but instead of chopping them down and hanging them to dry you leave one to flower until it dies,but before it dies you will notice that 1)the trichomes are no good anymore (too brown and yucky) and 2)that there are elongated sacs where the white pistils should be...thats when you take the plant and watch it VERY closely,when they look like they are about to burst you put a clear plastic bag over the plant,turn it upside down and shake the hell out of it(gently i might add)untill you see the pollen collect at the bottom of the bag,thats when you put that same bag over the other female you have flowering and spread the pollen so that she will produce seeds...now those seeds are a perfect clone of the mother....i hope i explained it easy enough...nikkz
 
nikk

nikk

Active Member
nycfunguy...im from brooklyn,shit im still living in brooklyn....holla at me if you need a grow buddy,i have a good amount of experience because as im typing this i need one more week of curing and then im done....so holla at me..peace
 
nycfunguy

nycfunguy

Active Member
just visiting and figured now is the time to post... nowhere near where I live... but yeah, I'm using a mix of the two spectrums... I guess I'll go another two weeks but I can't believe how long this is taking... 14 weeks... sativa so I'm just gonna cross my fingers and hope that I'm not seeing the trics wrong. there seem to be several red trics but mostly clear... do the cloudy ones show up in the last few weeks?
 
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