First time Small Closet Grow room (400watt Hg)

Hey guys,
This is my first semi-legit grow room using a proper lighting system.
Using a 400 watt Hg Bulb on a 1000 watt ballast.(24hrs)
I Started them from seed, i found the seeds in some amazing buddah :rasta: i grabbed last year and just held on to them.
They have been in soil now for 3.5 weeks (promix) and i have given them some low concenration fertilizer that i had from some failed grows before its a 1-0-2 and made by GROTEK its designed for veg stage.

So really the reason im making this thread is to get some feed back on my set up. Are they good size for how long they have been growing? My room get really warm too because of its size and the light. When should i start using Co2 bottles?

be careful, i heard its a fire hazard to use a different bulb watt for a different watt ballast. Also, during Veg, you might want to use CFL or MH bulb.

dont use CO2 until you can make your room air tight and you can exhaust your room. Well, I mean you can...I just find it a waste of money. Also get some reflective material in there..just not alluminum foil....and yes they look normal for 3 weeks. Start adding a bit more Nitrogen to the feeding schedule.

Plants look pretty good, maybe a little stretched, and IMO should be bigger with that light at that age. That light looks really far away for a 400w, but I understand that temps are an issue. What are the temps in there? Have you tried moving the light down, or tested with your hand to see what's bearable for the plants? I'd also mount the light sideways instead of hanging...

I think your next move should be to find a way to cool that light and your room. High temps will slow growth and flowering and could cause harmful stress.

BTW - CO2 is only effective in a sealed room.

Happy growing :jointsmile:

Yeah its around 80f in there usually i open the door every so often and pop my window open to let fresh air in. I am moving the light down to about 1 ft from the tops but im not going to mount it sideways untill i figure out a good way to do it in there....The bulb seems like it is tolerable as close as 3 inches or so....thnx for the advice and ill keep checking in with more pics every week.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bigtopsfinn

Plants look pretty good, maybe a little stretched, and IMO should be bigger with that light at that age. That light looks really far away for a 400w, but I understand that temps are an issue. What are the temps in there? Have you tried moving the light down, or tested with your hand to see what's bearable for the plants? I'd also mount the light sideways instead of hanging...

I think your next move should be to find a way to cool that light and your room. High temps will slow growth and flowering and could cause harmful stress.

BTW - CO2 is only effective in a sealed room.

Happy growing :jointsmile:

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This was what i was going to say. lol Bigtop knows what hes talking about for sure. The biggest thing i saw was that the light was so far away and like bigtopsfinn said the heat would be the cause. So, IMO id try and get cfl's to veg with. You can get a hook light and with 3 y splitters, you can keep your light about 2-3'' away from the light. This will keep the plant nodes tight and then when your ready to flower, id set up the light as bigtopsfinn suggested. Oh and some reflective stuff on the walls would help ya too. You could use the cfl hook light with your light to flower too, as i keep reading about the cross of light colors mixing can only help your yield. Dont get me wrong my man, as im new to growing inside, but read tons and have been coming across the mixing of light spectrum's.

But its a weed everyone says and they are very forgiving, so with a few mods here an there, you will get a great grow:thumbsup:

:rasta:

So great advice guys...I will defiently look into geting some different spectrums in the room when its time to bud. Im dealing with around 83-85 F with the new position of the light so that should be okay...i read mid 80's is fine just not 90s.

As mentioned, I agree that the higher temps and light distance are major issues with what is happening here... higher temps will almost always cause slow growth, and the light distance will cause them to stretch and have greater distance between nodes.

I use CFL lights mounted in Y-splitters (2 bulbs per splitter) and then 2 pairs of those plugged into power bars. I then hang the power-bars by thier cord and lower them to where they are safe to be - ~2 inches from the plants. Let me know if you'd like some pics. =)

Hey miffspliff, looks much better :thumbsup:

As long as you keep temps at 85F or less in the shade then you're OK, 75F would be better of course.

I didn't see that reflector before so I'll take back what I said earlier about mounting the light differently. As for cooling the light, I don't really know if they make any kinds of cooltubes or hooded reflectors for those lights.

What the Kelvin rating for that light? From here it looks like a veg light (6500K), are you looking into an HPS (2200K-2700K) for flowering?

Thanks Bigtopsfinn :thumbsup:Yeah it is a veg light for sure but im not sure what the calvin rating is on it:stoned:....so far it seems the temp will peak at 86 to 87f if the room door stays shut for 5hours+ so its pretty manageable now, just open it for 15 min or so to drop it 10 or 15f :jointsmile:......i have thought of HPS lighting for budding but its only feasible to me if i can pop an HPS bulb in my fixture and its doesn't cost 500 bucks. The idea of using compact Flouros was given to me in this thread so i was just thinking of making some vertical columns with compact florescents alongside the Plants.

Dayzt1 id love some picks of your light set up.....sounds like something i could put together from homehardware.

Just a quick update:
Added a 42W CFL Bulb to the mix, puts out 2800 Lumens.
12$ :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by miffspliff

Dayzt1 id love some picks of your light set up.....sounds like something i could put together from homehardware.

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This is what i was talking about. In this pic there is only one ''y'' splitter, but if you look at my grow log in here, you can see iv added one like it and a bigger one, which was a let down because only one y splitter would fit in the bigger one. But the smaller one's, you can take the hood off to add 3 splitters. Then you can fit 4 cfl's in each hook light. They were only $7.99 a piece and splitters are like 2 bucks. I have some 23wers and 27k and 26wters at 5k i think, but you can change the the bulbs to what spectrum you need. But id still use the light your using now too, i guess its a matter of heat for ya. The cfl's are low heat, but they add up. My log is in here and iv used cfl's through the grow.

Il tell ya HeadShake makes some really nice homemade cfl lights, with cardboard and grows the shit:thumbsup:

Hope this helps:rasta: