My first... 150W stealth closet.

This is my grow closet. I built it earlier this week and have started sprouting some bag seed I have chosen from my large stash. I'm running (1) 150W hps from HTG Supply and (2) 23W cfls. The hps puts out 16,000 lumens and the cfls put out about 1,700 a piece. The cfls are there to try to keep the light even throughout the whole closet. I may switch the cfls to led flood lights when I start veg if I have the money to try to produce a higher yield.

I'm going to use soil for my first grow to try and get the hang of it. I may switch to hydro for future grows but I want to keep it as simple as possible for this one because I don't know as much about it. The soil I have in the cups is the MG seed starter. I chose it because it is light for good root development and I won't have to fertilize for the first 2 weeks (or so). When I do get to the nutes I will be using Technaflora's recipe for success. I chose this kit for two reasons. First: It has everything I will need for this grow. And second: I don't want to spend money on more expensive kits in case I kill the plants. I have a temp/hygrometer mounted on the wall at soil level that has an "outdoor temp" bulb on a cord that I will move up the wall right under the light so I know what the temp is not only in the room but right under the light. A few more items I have at my disposal are: 5 gallon jug of ph balanced water, ph test kit, ph balancing tablets, magnafying glass, watering can, measuring cup, timer, calender and pen (for recording progress), and most important... a lock.

I am going to need help with one bug that has come up already. Yesterday I ran my first full light cycle... well, I tried to anyway. When I got home from school I checked on my grow room and found that the temperature was 106*F!!! I shut everything off immediately and left the door open to cool the room down as fast as possible. I don't have any way to vent the closet right now so heat may end up being a big problem for me. I did think about buying a new door and cutting an intake hole in the bottem and exhaust holes in the top with fans/controller and filters but I just don't have the money because I'm in college. If anybody can help me out it will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading and happy growing!

And I didn't forget the pictures!

No ideas?!

It's time... 3 of them have sprouted with another one split. The sprout wasn't peeking out yet so I'm letting it sit in the paper towel another day. I placed the three in their respective cups about 1/4 inch down and sprinkled a little moist soil over them. (I watered the cups before placing them in.) I started the timer at 18/6 with only the one 23W plugged in because of my heat issues. While I'm on that point, I found a door on craigslist for about $10 bucks depending on which one I choose. Two register vents will be installed (top and bottom) with a 80mm computer fan on top. The fan will run while the lights are on. That project should be finished around Tuesday. I will follow this post with some PICTURES!

Here are tonight's pics...

Sorry about the poor quality. My camera is temporarily out of service so these were from my phone. You can kinda make them out in the center.

Oh, and feel free to post.

i agree that you should get a temporary door to put up so that you can cut some holes in it without damaging the original property. you will definitely need to get some kind of moving air inside ur grow space. try to keep temp below 85 for best growth, also put a small bucket of water in the back somehow to let the water evaporate inside the room to get a higher humidity for vegging.

Thank you for posting igrowdro. I welcome any input. I was planning on putting water in there and building a cheap diy CO2 generator but that probably won't be until next weekend because I don't need it now.

I checked on my seeds again today and the one that was split had started peeking out so I put it in soil. Meanwhile, another one split so it should be ready for planting tomorrow. My thermometer keeps a high and low temp for a 24 hour period and my high was 73.8F and low was 68ish. After my heat issue is resolved I want 80F for a high and 65F when the lights are off. So I pretty much just need to vent the heat from the HPS and adjust my apartment heat from there. But I won't be able to know for sure until the door is completed. I did some shopping online today and this is what I decided to go with.

(2) 80mm computer fans rated 34cfm each
(1) Duel fan controller
(1) 110V to 12v converter

I know the cfm is way more than I need but I want to be able to control the heat from another HPS in if I decide to expand in the future. I chose to add the fan controller so I can turn them down to a good speed for my current setup.

Thanks to all who stopped by to read my journal.

Okay, this is where I start needing some help. Attached are two pictures I took tonight. The first sometime after 9:30 and the second one now at just passed 11:00. I notice some wilting and thought I would get the advice of some of the more senior RIU members. The tops of the leaves are a good medium dark green and the underside are a little bit lighter with dark coloring around the edges. Do you think there is some slight heat damage? It took off like a rocket today (it was just peaking out of the soil this morning) and I'm worried it got a little too close. If it did burn I don't think it was bad because the light was still a foot away at least. Also the other seeds have not broken soil yet. I used a toothpick to VERY lightly move soil from over the top and neither have shown any growth and look a little pale. I gave them just a tiny bit of water. (not enough to disturb the seed in any way) Otherwise the heat in the closet has stayed about the same at 81F high and 71F low. With humidity around 30%. Any thoughts?

Thank you.

get your CFL lights on top of that NOW! dont worry about the HPS yet it's gonna stretch further and further until you do and create a very week stem.

I tried an experiment starting seedlings under my 400W HPS, they shot 3-4 inches in they're first two days. The rest of my cups went directly below my cfl's. The CFL plants have 3 leaf sets and are only 2" tall after an entire week. HPS makes plants stretch too much in the beginning stages.

It also looks like the seed casing is still wrapped around the plant. carefully remove it, it's causing undue stress.

grrower said:

get your CFL lights on top of that NOW! dont worry about the HPS yet it's gonna stretch further and further until you do and create a very week stem.

I tried an experiment starting seedlings under my 400W HPS, they shot 3-4 inches in they're first two days. The rest of my cups went directly below my cfl's. The CFL plants have 3 leaf sets and are only 2" tall after an entire week. HPS makes plants stretch too much in the beginning stages.

It also looks like the seed casing is still wrapped around the plant. carefully remove it, it's causing undue stress.

Click to expand...

Thank's a lot for the help grrower. I'm only running the two cfls right now because of my heat issue. (While I'm on that note, I was relying on some money coming in the mail to get the new door, fans, and fan controller I need to deal with my problem. The package was delivered saturday morning and was stolen before I even made it out to my mailbox to get it. Inside was a Visa gift card with $100 on it. FML!) I will remove the seed casing gently and see if the sprout improves. Thanks again and +rep.

So at 5:06 (when I made my last post) I went to my grow room and the sprout had stretched so far it fell over. I dug around the plant lightly and tipped it back up trying to get the roots down as far as possible. I mounded some soil around the base of the stem and put two tooth picks in the soil so they crossed and supported the stem from tipping over. I put the cfl down as close as I dare (around 5-6 inches) and left it. When I came back just now the stem was straightening out and was already holding it's own weight. The leaves look healthier and have grown slightly in the past four and a half hours. I left the toothpicks in there and I will check on it one more time later tonight. Thanks again grrower.