LED Without LEDs -My First T5 Grow

Maybe a little longer, but I was growing them pretty badly, lol. Water stress, heat stress issues. I think I vegged maybe 6 weeks from seed. Your plants look pretty big to me... but I LST'd mine as I went so it's hard to get an accurate comparison.

Also, I guess it was more like 9.5 oz when I think about it.

Oh, and I definitely harvested early. I think I would have seen more weight if I gave it more time.

AltarNation said:

Maybe a little longer, but I was growing them pretty badly, lol. Water stress, heat stress issues. I think I vegged maybe 6 weeks from seed. Your plants look pretty big to me... but I LST'd mine as I went so it's hard to get an accurate comparison.

Also, I guess it was more like 9.5 oz when I think about it.

Oh, and I definitely harvested early. I think I would have seen more weight if I gave it more time.

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I've been going back and forth with my thoughts on light height as well. Part of me likes keeping them about 3" off the top but the other part of me thinks the spectrum blends better when I keep it more like 10" off the top. So i've been keeping it 6"

Yeah I hear ya. Hard to say what's better on that. I like to give them a little extra space to keep the heat of the bulbs away from the buds... and the spectrum blend is a bonus. I would have them 1-3" if I could do it, but since my fixture is retrofitted with a couple extra tubes that hang lower than the rest, I inevitably have them a bit farther off. I'd say the middle tubes are about 2-3" from the buds but the rest inevitably fall closer to 4-6".

BTW I am psyched at the size increases I'm seeing on my buds, but the vegging airpots seem to have slowed down. I am not sure if they've reached capacity and are ready for transplant or if it's because they are sort of outgrowing the 4-bulb light or what... but I got some bigger airpots to put them in so I will transplant soon and see how they react to that. I am also considering tearing those two retrofitted bulbs out of the flowering room and putting them in the veg chamber.

I flipped the veg chamber's light to the side lighting position, so I'm rotating the plants every day to get even light now. Can't wait to harvest so I can get those ladies fully covered again, from both sides. Now I'm just torn on whether I should set up the new flowering run in the closet or my tent... closet is so hard to get at the plants in, and is an eve closet so one of the walls is diagonal, cramping space as they grow up taller... on the other hand, the tent is easy to get and has no diagonal wall impeding vertical space, but has a smaller footprint. (closet is about a 4x3.5' footprint while the tent is 4x2)

Agh... got to settle on it soon so I can set up the new fan and filter before I put more lights in either way... (Right now the closet is just open air, because they don't stink much yet and the 4-bulb T5's put off almost no heat compared to the bigger setup)

I'm gonna take some new pics for you guys today, just to show off me buds infact, brb.

Lucius Vorenus said:

BTW if we don't get at least 24z out of the 18 plants we will have a bunch of Bad Boy fixtures and bulbs for sale soon for you guys with more time to waste

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Well this puts me in a spot. I want you to succeed...but those sweet, sweet, discount fixtures call to me...

kpmarine said:

Well this puts me in a spot. I want you to succeed...but those sweet, sweet, discount fixtures call to me...

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LOL, hahaha.

I love how active this thread is. T5 Nation! haha.

Here's some pics I just took... first the buds, then the veg chamber:




New fim job on tallest plant, decided she was gonna have to join the others in multi-cola-dom after all due to outgrowing the rest:


Love this shot, this is one of the older fims from straight above... perfect X:

I used to keep my light 10 inches away for spectrum blend. Half way through a batch, 3 batches ago I dropped it to.3 inches away. Got much better results. Each batch the buds get bigger and better. Closer- more intenisty. we covered the whole thing about inverse square law a while ago.

Yield mainly depends on strain. I have 1 strain thats a sativa dominant hybrid. It will easily pull 2 oz with not doing much. But my pure indicas. I hve to tie down and super crop to get 1 oz and veg for 4 weeks. If veg for 8 weeks. They pull 1.5 oz.

Next week im putting my first par sog into flower. 24 1 gal in the place of 6 big girls. 48 x 18. 4 plants per sq ft. Im aiming at 14g per plant. That will double my yield with only tops.


P.S. A while ago I tried empire soil and said it was great. I was sadly mestaken. Its apparently an ammending soil and runs hot like super soil. Eventually leaves cuppled tough and looked like venus fly traps. They came out of it in flower.

Ive tried, ocean forest, empire, dr earth, sunshine mix, happy frog , roots coco. Now im doing root organic original
soil. So far I like this one the most. Everything is so lush and vegging fast. I love that it has a ton of chunky perlite in it.

AltarNation said:

LOL, hahaha.

I love how active this thread is. T5 Nation! haha.

Here's some pics I just took... first the buds, then the veg chamber:

View attachment 2103094View attachment 2103095View attachment 2103096View attachment 2103097View attachment 2103098View attachment 2103099View attachment 2103100View attachment 2103101View attachment 2103102View attachment 2103103View attachment 2103104View attachment 2103105View attachment 2103106View attachment 2103107View attachment 2103108

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New fim job on tallest plant, decided she was gonna have to join the others in multi-cola-dom after all due to outgrowing the rest:View attachment 2103115

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Love this shot, this is one of the older fims from straight above... perfect X:View attachment 2103117
View attachment 2103118

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Like button.

Looks good.

Looks Awsome A.N.

Nice Altar, how long left on those buds? They're looking good. Sadly, I must smack some other folks with the rep stick before I can +1 you again.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. Went ahead and started a grow journal so I wouldnt overload this thread with pics every few days. will still post my pics here every 2 weeks or so so folks can see my test results when they study T5 Better then LED setups.

Cheers

kpmarine said:

Nice Altar, how long left on those buds? They're looking good. Sadly, I must smack some other folks with the rep stick before I can +1 you again.

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I don't know really... it's bag seed and I have no predictable window. They are clones from my last batch, but I don't even know which plants the came from so... shrug! (I had 7 random bag seed plants) haha. Last time I gave them about 8-9 weeks I think, but they could have gone a bit longer. (I harvested early because I was impatient and was worried they would over-ripen while I was out of town for Christmas... in retrospect, they could have gone a couple more weeks comfortably I think.)

I am tracking this batch a lot better... I started 12/12 almost exactly 2 mo's ago, (Feb 6th) but realistically should probably track from about a week after that when they started showing flowers, so I figure this is about week 7. I also kind of stunted their development because I scrog'd them two weeks AFTER they started flowering (whoops) around Feb 22nd.

Sooo... I figure they should be finishing up within the next couple weeks if all goes well. I might let them go a bit longer, though, because the 8-9 weeks I gave them the first batch was a slightly premature harvest.

Wow, that's a long winded answer. Haha. I am GUESSING somewhere around 2 weeks left.

--

My vegging batch are 5 seedlings from the nicest of that first batch of plants, which happened to also be the slowest to ripen, haha. The most sativa looking of the strains, and also the most trichome-laden. So those should take even longer. I'm going to transplant those (probably tomorrow) into some larger air pots, then they will go the last 2 weeks or so in veg while the others finish up. Then I am moving the veg fixture in with the flowering fixture for these next five ladies to flower with a full 14-bulb setup, which will be all vertical. (4 on one side, 8 on the other, two retrofitted tubes floating in the middle between the plant "rows"... which will really be a sort of staggering with 2 on the 4-tube side and 3 on the 8-tube side.)

jsamuel24 said:

Oh yeah, forgot to mention. Went ahead and started a grow journal so I wouldnt overload this thread with pics every few days. will still post my pics here every 2 weeks or so so folks can see my test results when they study T5 Better then LED setups.

Cheers

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Nice, subbed your journal.

kpmarine said:

Nice, subbed your journal.

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Thanks, allways great to get advice from folks in the good old Del Norte. Heh, my mom grew up in Del Norte. I love fishing up there.

AltarNation said:

I don't know really... it's bag seed and I have no predictable window. They are clones from my last batch, but I don't even know which plants the came from so... shrug! (I had 7 random bag seed plants) haha. Last time I gave them about 8-9 weeks I think, but they could have gone a bit longer.

I am tracking this batch a lot better... I started 12/12 almost exactly 2 mo's ago, (Feb 6th) but realistically should probably track from about a week after that when they started showing flowers, so I figure this is about week 7. I also kind of stunted their development because I scrog'd them two weeks AFTER they started flowering (whoops) around Feb 22nd.

Sooo... I figure they should be finishing up within the next couple weeks if all goes well. I might let them go a bit longer, though, because the 8-9 weeks I gave them the first batch was a slightly premature harvest.

Wow, that's a long winded answer. Haha. I am GUESSING somewhere around 2 weeks left.

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The best answers are rarely short. haha I think I have about a week and a half left on my plants, tops. All the hairs are turning finally. This is mid week 7 for me. All my strains are supposed to be about 8-9 weeks on average.

jsamuel24 said:

Thanks, allways great to get advice from folks in the good old Del Norte. Heh, my mom grew up in Del Norte. I love fishing up there.

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Yeah, I'm damn near spitting distance from lake shasta. Haven't been here long, but did some fishing last fall. Looks like a promising place to get a line wet.

kpmarine said:

Yeah, I'm damn near spitting distance from lake shasta. Haven't been here long, but did some fishing last fall. Looks like a promising place to get a line wet.

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Shasta is awsome, took my boat up there 2 times last year. The Klamath is also great starting about Memorial Day. Nice Salmon come out of there. Much better then the salmon we get out of our river down here.

hey guys just got a 4 bulb t5 whats the best bulb setup? i was thinking 2 12000k wave points and 2 coral growth accelerators? and untill i can afford them i was gonna use 2 actinic bulbs that came with the light uknown brand(faded) and 2 4100k sylvania bulbs from menards as they seem to have the best spread a lot of blue and a dash of uva.

sound good for veg?

polyarcturus said:

hey guys just got a 4 bulb t5 whats the best bulb setup? i was thinking 2 12000k wave points and 2 coral growth accelerators? and untill i can afford them i was gonna use 2 actinic bulbs that came with the light uknown brand(faded) and 2 4100k sylvania bulbs from menards as they seem to have the best spread a lot of blue and a dash of uva.

sound good for veg?

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Sounds like it will work pretty well. Much better when you get the better lights of course.

jsamuel24 said:

Looks Awsome A.N.

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BTW guys thanks for the good feedback... I am not entirely satisfied once again... I am such a perfectionist and every time I find more that could have gone better. I REALLY wish I got the scrog screens on sooner so I had a more even canopy of buds... BUT, still some good buds coming up. Also, I am definitely ready for a genetics change because these buds just don't get THAT big. But I think it is genetic, as these are random bag seeds.

Looking forward to maybe seeing a slightly better yeild on my next batch... and most likely will also be buying yet another fixture (lol) so that I can veg my new sannies seeds. Kolossus here I come...