Tent Question???

Hello RIU!

I am a Major Noobie, 45 days into the hobby and I am a little overwhelmed.

I have 20 plants at three different ages, all bag seeds in my veg area.

I have a small area to fit a tent so I ordered a Secret Jardin 3'x3'x6' for Flower Space.

I have two HPS lights to choose from, 400 and 600 watts. (Good friends came bearing gifts, the lights)

I will pull Room temp air into the tent at 74-75 degrees in thru a vent.

I have a 6" inline fan to pull air out of hood out another vent to a Carbon filter sitting outside the tent.

How would you setup this equipment ???
Am I thinking correct??

please throw me any good ideas!

I will start cloning as plants reach maturity.

I plan to put clones into flower and wait to see the sex on my first 8 plants.

kill off the boys and using the new space in my veg I will take multiple clones and veg them then move to flower.

how can I make this work with hydroponics?
is a DWC bucket my best choice?

what is the minimum distance between the plants and the 400 watt light??

What is the minimum distance between the plants and the 600 watt light??

Bless,
DZ

Your gonna be fighting the heat from the hps do you got a cool tube? That tent gonna get hot. Promix for hydro I would make sure your temps are good before trying dwc gotta keep the temps of res down

Dogenzengi said:

Hello RIU!

I am a Major Noobie, 45 days into the hobby and I am a little overwhelmed.

I have 20 plants at three different ages, all bag seeds in my veg area.

I have a small area to fit a tent so I ordered a Secret Jardin 3'x3'x6' for Flower Space.

I have two HPS lights to choose from, 400 and 600 watts. (Good friends came bearing gifts, the lights)

I will pull Room temp air into the tent at 74-75 degrees in thru a vent.

I have a 6" inline fan to pull air out of hood out another vent to a Carbon filter sitting outside the tent.

How would you setup this equipment ???
Am I thinking correct??

please throw me any good ideas!

I will start cloning as plants reach maturity.

I plan to put clones into flower and wait to see the sex on my first 8 plants.

kill off the boys and using the new space in my veg I will take multiple clones and veg them then move to flower.

how can I make this work with hydroponics?
is a DWC bucket my best choice?

what is the minimum distance between the plants and the 400 watt light??

What is the minimum distance between the plants and the 600 watt light??

Bless,
DZ

Click to expand...

I think temp will be a concern with your setup i agree with the above u should def invest in a cool tube

If u plan on running both those hps lights in that tent i think it would be a miracle.

Thanks!
no I am asking if it is even possible to flower with the 600 in that tent?

from the sounds of it, no 600.

not sure I understand the difference between the cool tub and my vented hood?
Both pull grow room air across the bulb and out.
mine just has a larger reflector.

What distance do you need to maintain generally between plant and light with 400 HPS?

Thank you again for any help or answers .

Bless,
DZ

I keep my 400 around 10-12". And the 600 would work but would have more of a problem unless u can drop the temp @ intake room not sure you would have much luck wit a cool tube in that tent unless u get a DIY one as 19" ones are hard to find if not buying a kit

heres my 2 cents,

if your useing a filter, you want to suck through it, so mount it high in the corner in the tent. next pipe the filter to the sealed hood or cool tube. next pipe the other of the light to the suction side of blower (I mounted my blower outside the tent) then run your exhaust to whever you want. seal everything good including your hood. run a 600w dont waste you time with the 400. 20 plants is way to many. my buddys tent is 2x4x7 and he runs 2 at a time. if you want large healthy grows they need room.

Do the DWC in the winter time. the water needs to be 65-68 to keep from growing bad things (pyrithum) use a soiless mix in summer if your using hydroponic nutes. dont over do it you wont be happy whit the outcome, nutes, watering. check the PH , everthing. to low or to high of humidity can hurt you. 40-60 is a good range.

Keep the light an about 8-10" from large plants if you notice burining move it up. small plants 24"+ dont burn them.

establish a cycle with your veg to flower makes it a lot easier to handle

remember bigger roots = bigger plants = bigger flowers

also if you are worried about room in the tent then top, super crop
or bend to kepp the plants lower

good luck

Dogenzengi said:

Hello RIU!

I am a Major Noobie, 45 days into the hobby and I am a little overwhelmed.

I have 20 plants at three different ages, all bag seeds in my veg area.

I have a small area to fit a tent so I ordered a Secret Jardin 3'x3'x6' for Flower Space.

I have two HPS lights to choose from, 400 and 600 watts. (Good friends came bearing gifts, the lights)

I will pull Room temp air into the tent at 74-75 degrees in thru a vent.

I have a 6" inline fan to pull air out of hood out another vent to a Carbon filter sitting outside the tent.

How would you setup this equipment ???
Am I thinking correct??

please throw me any good ideas!

I will start cloning as plants reach maturity.

I plan to put clones into flower and wait to see the sex on my first 8 plants.

kill off the boys and using the new space in my veg I will take multiple clones and veg them then move to flower.

how can I make this work with hydroponics?
is a DWC bucket my best choice?

what is the minimum distance between the plants and the 400 watt light??

What is the minimum distance between the plants and the 600 watt light??

Bless,
DZ

Click to expand...

after looking back you need to rethink ur setup as fan goes. Carbon filter>fan>out

Sire Killem All said:

after looking back you need to rethink ur setup as fan goes. Carbon filter>fan>out

Click to expand...

True story.

Some carbon filters can be pushed or pulled through. I, for reasons I cant be bothered going in to, also run the venilation system in reverse. Passive intake > vented hood > ducting to outside of tent > fan > filter.

Again I would encourage you to take these steps as stress free as possible try not to overwhelm yourself with too much to do at one time. Some of this stuff you'll learn viz trial and error anyways mang! If ya don't mind me asking ya why so many to start off with? seems like ya kinda overwhelmed yourself with so many to look after. Here's a tent with babies in it!

Thank You All for the Advice!

I only had bags seeds and I actually did not expect the germination rate!

Plants are all unknown bag seeds.

I am building a low platform out of PVC to put plant on w res under.
I bought a black tote w yellow cover as a resevoir.

Bless,
DZ

Make sure u read up in the hydro thread need a lot more to run hydro.

If you have the carbon filter on the inside and pulling air through it with ducting to the outside of the tent, how do you make it light proof? Light comes through my ducting. Also how do I run a light tight passive intake on the tent?

I will be building an Ebb n Flow system, the same as I made in my Veg space only 1/2 the size.
I have four 10 gallon tubs side by side across a 6' long in my Veg closet.
they are all piped to one resevoir below the table I built across the closet.

I will do a 2 tub setup With the same size tubs on a low PVC stand with bracing for scrog screen.
the resevoir fits below the two tubs.

What I already have :
two tubs
resevoir
string to make screen
eyelets to attach screen to PVC frame
PVC frame is built and waiting for my Tent
the air pump
air stone
1/4" tubing
water pump
tubing for supply fittings in tubs
tubing for overflow fittings
rock wool
hydroton
Nutes, I am using Fox Farm;
big bloom
grow big
tiger bloom


Bless,
DZ

Get the 400 watt. Don't be one of these fools trying to pull off too much heat in too little space. You are going to need a air cooled hood however, even with the lesser wattage.

Whatever light a person is using one should use the back of hand method. Put the back of your hand under the light so that it's so close that it hurts and you can't keep it there. Then back the hand away until it is at a comfortable distance and you can keep your hand there. That's the distance you need.
Only exception is with baby seedlings. In that case you need much more space. Like 3 feet to start.

my creds, I have a 3x3 jardin and a 400 watt with an air cooled hood. During the hot summer months heat can be a problem even with an airconditioner in the room. With a 600 watt it would be fry city.

@ Edgar,

Thanks, what temp do you keep the room the tent is in?
I am going with the 400, it's a dual ballast so I can go from CFL in my Veg to metal halide then switch to HPS for completion.
I will be trying my hand at using a mesh over the plants that I mainlined and Supercropped.
The E n B style of Hydro works well for me so far in my Veg space.
I have started the creation of the the same setup just half the size for inside the flowering tent.

Bless,
DZ

Dogenzengi said:

@ Edgar,

Thanks, what temp do you keep the room the tent is in?
I am going with the 400, it's a dual ballast so I can go from CFL in my Veg to metal halide then switch to HPS for completion.
I will be trying my hand at using a mesh over the plants that I mainlined and Supercropped.
The E n B style of Hydro works well for me so far in my Veg space.
I have started the creation of the the same setup just half the size for inside the flowering tent.

Bless,
DZ

Click to expand...

I've noticed that the temp in the tent when the light is on will always be about 10 degrees warmer than the ambient temp in the room the tent is in.

Winter time is no problem since it's always about 65 degrees in my house and therefore it runs about 75 in the tent with the lights on.

Living in New England sometimes it gets pretty hot in the summer so I'll run my a/c at the lowest setting which is 60 and the room will be around 70. In that example the summer tent temps usually run about 80 but if it's a serious heat wave the a/c can only do so much and I've had the temp in the tent in the high 80's during flowering and haven't had any problems.
So basically summer is the only hard time with temps and during those months I basically try and keep the room as cool as possible.
A good thing to do is run your lights at night if temps are a concern. It's always cooler at night.

side note: One thing about the jardins that works well is to use circular key chains around the tubing and then you can hang any kind of S hook on them. The tubes are thick and a lot of random S hooks will not fit around the tubing.
If you use the key chain rings you just have to plan out ahead of time where you want the rings and put the rings around the tubing when you assemble.