Leave Autoflower Light Intensity at 50%, or Increase as you Would With a Photoperiod?

Rocket Soul said:

Looks like quite happy plants but you have tip burn on most leaves, are you feeding too much?

It could also be from over transpiration when you turned up the light but not too sure; it goes counter to leaves becoming droopy when raising temps and light intensity.

Vipar 1500xs : this light has too high light levels (generally speaking, theres always exceptions) for an auto on +18hours of light on when hung at manufacturer recommend height and kept on 100% intensity.

75%: when you tried this, and then had a look and saw droopy leaves; why do you think it was the heat and not too much intensity which made the plant droopy? What was the temperature difference?

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Sammy Thickbud said:

Hi Rocket Soul!
Yes the plant got so much bigger quickly that I figured I would try feeding twice a week! Did that for two weeks, then noticed the tip burn and will just do once a week from here on out.
--Thanks for explaining details on my particular light! I have found that hanging the light much higher than the manufacturer recommended made my growth WAY more vigorous. At this point the highest cola is about 11 inches (28 cm) from the light and I can't raise it any higher.
--As for your last questions: I ordered a temp/humidity device to measure with, but it's yet to arrive so I am not certain what the temps were when the leaves drooped. Looking back, it def could have been simply the light being too intense at 75%, but another variable it took me awhile to realize was that the reservoir (I'm growing hydro style) needed to be topped off daily or the leaves droop.
--I tried it at 75% today but then chickened out as I pondered the 11 inches from cola to light, haha. Last attempt with Northern Lights I recall turning up the light over night only to find it had basically fried the tallest cola! This being I think my 4th attempt, I am very cautious..I just want to complete the task and have it deliver at least a single mason jar full of kind buds This plant has so many frickin buds on it it is unbelievable. It's an Afghani auto from Grower's Choice Seeds. An expert told me the plant has that dang Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
--Oh, and I have been following the General Hydroponics LIGHT FEED schedule.
--I think I will do one more week at the "mid bloom" level, which has kept the BLOOM (name of the fert) levels at 4.6 for the last couple weeks, then enter WEEK 6 of flower

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Rocket Soul said:

- that means that the plant is transpiring very well, which is a good thing! you just need to figure out those tops ups, maybe a bigger rez? The more your plant transpires the better, means its healthy and happy. If you can manage to keep up with your plant then go for 75% but if its too hard, stay at 50%.
I decided on using a 9.4-liter Tupperware container. This means when it's about half full (as it is when filled to the max) there is about 1.25 gallons of nute water. You are right, a bigger rez would help a couple things, but the weight of it limited my ability to increase rez size. I couldn't really lift a fresh container of new weekly nutes if it were any bigger. Placing it in the tent is tricky and easy to slosh around.

- what do you mean way more vigorous? More vertical growth? This would be quite normal, a plant will try to avoid to grow into an area of too much light, you can many times use high light intensity to keep the plant from stretching. In these cases, if you raise the light considerably then your likely to see a considerable increase in height, until the plant reaches the point of growing taller would take it into too high intensity light.
If only I had realized that perhaps increasing to 75% or even 100% would have helped to keep the plant from growing too tall! Will utilize this knowledge next time! Thanks for reminding me of this concept.

As for general, and especially with leds: minimum amount of sensor gear is EC/PH meter and temps/rh. And to test both your inputs and runoff (ec and ph). If youve had 3 u successful grows this should defo be your first stop. And next stop, a nice little note book and keep notes daily of temps/rh and EC/ph for each watering.
Ok, I do have a truncheon ppm/EC stick and an Aspera (I think thats the name?) pH meter. Yes, I will take notes on the next plant! I'm setting up to do a dirt run next time. I'm trying to dry out the soil ahead of time by pouring it into big plastic tubs (1 Happy Frog, 1 Ocean Forest). One of my gurus Welcome to the Grow Tent (Youtube) says it can help get rid of those bugs that other us

As for current situation: my advice is to keep it at 50% for the time being, should put you into the 600 ppfd range, which if you run 18 hours would be kinda equivalent to 900ppfd for 12 hours, basicly where you wanna be. Further light would mean youd need to control all factors extremely well. At 50% youd at least finish a decent crop, 75 would probably be a plant suffering and staggering towards the finish line
Thank you very much for your attention to detail! This is great news! I was told doing it at 50% would reduce yield by 50%, but with as many buds as I see on the bush already, that seems fine to me, and it sure would be a shame to fry the nice frosty buds.

Edit: for this last bit please note im talking about light intensity in the context of DLI or total amount of light the plant receives during its daytime cycle. Ok, I think I get it!

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