Fluorescents

Okay so my grow room is approximately 4 feet by 6 feet and 8 feet tall, walls are painted glossy white for reflection, plants are in one gal buckets for the time being and I have them on a 24/7 light regimine, not concerned with power bill. The lights that I am using are fluorescent, one is 4 feet and colored worm and the other is 6 feet colored day glow. They are about 6 inches from the plants about 1 inch taller than the leaves. In other words up one inch and to the side 6 inches. I have one light on each side of the walls running the length of the walls and also sun comes in through a window during the day. I will add pictures soon. Any advise to change the grow room setup or does this sound fairly good. The plants are 8 weeks in age counting from the start when I seeded the seeds so about 3 weeks of actuall leaves. Still very young.

Walls should have been painted flat white not glossy...your are running one fluorescent on each wall? You have a large area and going to need a lot more light than that. You have a nice area it sounds like, have you thought about getting a HPS/HID light? Way better unless you want to run a bunch (and I mean a bunch) of CFL or T5. If your lights are normal tube fluorescents mounted on the side of the wall it isn't going to do much. Regardless of power bill...your setup would cost nothing either way at this point....you do not need to run the lights 24/7. I like to give them some rest...maybe a 20/4 schedule? Those plants need to be right up to those lights 1-2 inches and you will need to transplant to a bigger pot soon. Do you have a little money to invest? How far do you want to take this grow room?

I wanna make it so that the plants are able grow not concerned with much more than that and I can get anything ill need at some point. The walls were wallpaper that I painted but I did get a lot of people telling me to switch to flat paint so took the wallpaper down I'll put up new one when I can. I only have 8 plants so trying to keep it small. I don't wanna draw to much attention so I am not installing vents I am getting a fan and carbon fliter for the smell too. With a 24-7 light cycle I also don't half to worry bout getting a cycle together they can basically handle themselves

Gotcha, I would love to recommend a 600w HPS/HID for that area but you would need to duct hot air out some how (inline fan). It gets pretty hot with that light. I run a 400 in my closet which is 2'x4'x8' roughly and duct hot air out to my attic....my temps stay around 80. 8 plants is not small at all.....in fact if they are all female plants and you grow 8 in that area it is going to get pretty crowded. I guess it all depends on the style your growing to. I max out at 4 plants in my closet and this run only doing 2 but did some topping and lst to get them bushier and they filled out as much as 4 would. So if your getting a fan and filter your just going to run the fan pulling air through the filter and exhausting back in the grow area? You can keep your setup the way it is with lights surrounding side but when you get your main light use those as side lighting for lower branches that over head wont penetrate. So about your overhead lighting situation....if you really want to grow 8 plants in that area you will need something like a 600. You could get a couple LED panels (kinda expensive) or maybe some a couple T'5 (4' 8 tube setup) and run that. You still have to be aware of heat, getting stale air out and fresh air in. You doing soil grow?

Ditto on the flat white paint. Glossy white will reduce the reflection . I like to put 3/4 " thick Mylar coated super lightweight foam board on my walls. Even though the light reflection is about 3% lower overall compared to flat white paint, there is less heat absorption of the walls because poly styrene 4' x 8' boards have about 1/200th of the mass of Sheetrock which in turn is a better than excellent trade-off . The room stays much warmer with Sheetrock walls.

If u really believe that the light overhead will help ill invest in one but not sure if the plants are even staying indoors yet. Probably. And the fan is going to be set up in my window blowing out to allow heat to leave and smell as well the carbon filter will be pallaced before the fan so smell will hit it before venting out the window and I am getting battery powered fans for inside and using recharables to keep them going ie less electricity.rooms small enough it doesn't Néed a big fan. I'm growing them in a pot with soil yes, if I don't transplant them into a larger container will they still grow but be smaller in size or is that going to effect my bud count and potency?

Okay here are some photos of the setup I said I'd post

For the carbon filter to work you will need an inline fan ducted to it. To pull air though it and out the window. Just having in front of a box fan would not do anything. You can get by with low light at first with your small plants. But as they grow will require more light and when they flower even more. You def need lots more light and space too from what it looks like in those pics. Smaller pots will mean you will have smaller plants. I would recommend 3 gallon. You can grow a 2-3 foot plant. Veg one month then flip to 12/12 and flower for two more. Your plants will double in size once you start flowering. If you keep them in small pots you will get much less yield! The strain determine potency mainly of course growing conditions help too. More light equals more buds.

The strain is afghani kush and thanks for advice on pot size that will help a lot with keeping plant small and I still plan to keep a 24-7 light cycle on the plants. I want a good yield but not to much either. The widow is going to be removed and replaced with a fan and I'm going to use a carbon filter for condition unite not the cylinder one that requires ductwork. Both do the same thing jus need different ways to work. Even if I leave the plants in a 3 gal bucket should I still pinch them or won't that be neccary

Pinch them? My setup right now I used two gallon smart pots. Got two edelweiss clones and went strait into 2 gallon pots with fox farm ocean forest soil. I did 20/4 lighting schedule for 3 weeks the topped them above second node. Veg one more week then went to 12/12. My plants were around 12 inches. I am now in week 5 of flower and my plants after stretch are about 25". Also when I went into flower I put a screen/net up and opened up the canopy to let the middle growth get lots of light and catch up to 4 main colas on each plant. I like the smart pots next time will use 3 gallon. I didn't fim or lst when they were young but next run I will train more and scrog, super crop and see how that goes. I think I will get about 2 oz per plant. Was hoping for more prob should have veg a little longer longer. If this is your first run maybe just let them go and see how they do, dial in your setup and feeding schedule. Continue to learn and apply some of the other techniques next time around.

By pinch I am refwering to topping were u pinch the stem to stop growth in hight. This isn't my first grow just my first serious effort last time I juast had them in a window for their entiore life and when to big out them outside behing the building and came out ok now I wanna do more and see how much bud I can really make

Definitely want to get more lights. Try to get a bunch of 6500k 42w cfls and covering everything with mylar. Those lights should be closer. 2" away. Hope this helps.

I'll stick my neck out here and say I don't believe that flat paint reflects more light than gloss paint. The difference is in how fine the paint pigments are ground; flat paint is courser ground and bounces the light about at every angle. Gloss paint pigment is ground very fine and reflects more (that's why it's called "reflection") light in a linear pattern, rather than diffusion. I'd like to see Myth Busters do this one.

Hmmm. This is one of those I couldn't tell you from my own experience. I did make some Mylar panels that can easily be moved in and out of my closet and when I see the point where the Mylar stops and the flat white wall starts it looks brighter to me then the reflection off the Mylar. I'm sure it is not going to make a huge difference anyway. But yeah one of those things I read and believed kinda like thinking a mirror would work the best but I hear it absorbs light and not best reflective surface? Let's submit to myth busters. Lol

Lol so today on myth busters a bunch of stoners wanna know howe to grow more effectively with Mylar, flat paint, glossy paint or other reflective sufaces!

Like Rwbrock said, I'd invest in a 600 or a 400 w/cooltube. For $200 you can get a cheap one and duct/fan. By time you get enough cfl's or t5's to get proper bud density/quality you could easily do this. I normally just grew outside but this jan decided to grow some inside while veg my outside plants. I started with cfl's and spent $100 on bulbs, fixtures etc... Withen 1 month I needed more bulbs,fixtures etc... I spent 150 on a 600 w/cooltube. Good luck.

Yea I get the setup I need I realize I cant buy it all now that's why I am going to move them outside untill I can afford the proper setup. I have plenty of seeds so even if the plants I have now don work well I'll clone them and repeat with better setup