My last amatuer grow. 430W HPS. All NEW Equipment!!! Lots of pics. Update 4/18/10 TRANSPLANT! - Grow Journals

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DrGreenThumb

Registered: 08/09/08
Posts: 487
Loc: Phish Tour

My last amatuer grow. 430W HPS. All NEW Equipment!!! Lots of pics. Update 4/18/10 TRANSPLANT!

#397759 - 04/07/10 03:27 PM (14 years, 8 months ago)

Here's the equipment:

Grow tent: 6 ft³ Reflective Mylar Interior. $175.00
You can see my current grow in front of it. The frame needs to be tied to the ceiling of the room at the center of the tent in order to feel safe about it holding my reflector. Not a big deal just 1 more thing to fix.

Ventilation: 6" Soler & Palau TD-Mixvent Inline Fan Model: TD-150 Airflow: 218/293 CFM 54/65 Watts $155.00

Bulbs: Eye Hortilux 430W Super HPS & 400W Hortilux Blue MH $140.00
I was just going to buy the MH Blue but the HPS was on sale at the same place so I couldn't pass it up. I basically saved $10 on the HPS and $20 on the MH Blue. Now, I'm going to do this one grow under the 430W HPS and save the Blue for veg for the next 1000W grow. The 400W HPS will then become a back-up for that until I can afford a back-up 1000.

Reflector + Ballast: Sunlight Supply 6" Blockbuster Reflector 24"x24" All wired up with cord and socket. Drop shipped from manufacturer. $150.00
Lumatek 400W Digital Ballast w/ SuperLumens mode $145.00
Just came today!

Total

: $765.00

LIGHT TEST!!! -4/10/10

Hung the light today and fired 'er up!!! This light is BRIGHT.

I just anchored my frame to the ceiling this morning. Here's a few pics. You can see the anchor in the ceiling strap and I have a scrap piece of nylon rope that was fed through the seam (no hole) and tied to the center of the frame (pic #2). Now instead of the frame bowing down when you hang the light, it bows UP!!! One of my more satisfying purchases.

Hung the reflector with ratcheting straps. Definitely not going to fall now! To lift it up, just give each side a crank.

The ballast is behind the tent. :cool:

Just need to add my ducting and the inline fan.

This light is almost TWICE as bright as the 400W vertical HPS I have running now. I guess if the bulb is vertical you loose about 30% of your light. So that's +30%; plus it's a digital ballast so add about another 20-30%. New bulb on top of it all and you can see how it's almost twice as much light. Think I'll fire it up on 4/20 for good luck!

And more pics of the reflector as requested.

One thing I noticed when taking pics of the bulb. With my other magnetic ballast 400 I always get flicker when taking pics. It's a bitch. I have to take MANY pics, delete the ones that are too dark or too light and sort through the rest. With this light every pic comes out crystal clear. No flicker at all. I guess it has to do with the fact magnetics run at 60Hz. and digitals run at 20-30,000Hz.

Anyway what I'm saying is this Journal is gonna have some SIC PICS!!!

Harry: You can see the post that holds the glass to the reflector, right next to the sticker. And the pic of the seam on one of the flanges. They both look identical.

THE GROW
Going back to the old Sensi Star? with seeds from my first harvest. Takes longer to finish but it yields. The hermie trait is not as pronounced as in this strain. I'm hoping that by starting many I can toss all the ones that herm on me and it won't affect my harvest. I plan on "lollipopping" all the plants and focusing on 1 large cola.

A few of the seedlings are for an early outdoor planting. It's warming up fast here. :yesnod:

Starting out in the veg. closet under my Overdriven Shoplights. (2) 4ft. fixtures. This pic is the light rail I modded for this grow. I added the gold chain hooks in order to move the lights closer together. I may add a third in a future grow.

Germination: Started germination (35 seeds) at 9PM on March 30th. Waited 36 hours. Opened container on April 1st. at 9AM. 100% germination.
Lost 1 seed. It germinated so hard that the seed pod cut the cotyledon right off the taproot. Threw one seed out. Here's 23 that were in one container.

Transplanted to 3" peat pots and put in nursery trays. Mix of Pro-Mix BX and regular soil (50/50).
All seedlings popped the soil on Sunday with the exception of 1 (it popped soil Monday). You can see how close I run the OD shoplights to the seedlings. No burns. These pics were taken 4/6/10 (yesterday).

-4/12/10 (8 Days Veg.) 6 Days Later.
Kind of an early update. Growing fast. Notice how close the true leaves are in relation to the cotyledons. Testament to the power of the OVERDRIVE!!! :sunny:

I've noticed how short my seedlings are in comparison with others around here. Most beginners are scared to run fluoros close to their seedlings because they're scared of them growing into the light and burning. However, if the light was closer from the beginning, they would not have stretched in the first place. Lesson: LOWER YOUR LIGHTS!!! (from the start)

-4/18/10 (14 Days Veg.) TRANSPLANT TIME!!!
Things are moving fast and so must I. I planned on transplanting on 4/20 but decided to start a few days earlier. I couldn't wait any longer to fire up the new HPS!!!

Started germinating a few more seeds to fill my veg room. Bunch of random seeds I had lying around. Should be interesting for some outdoor.

I hooked up the rest of my ducting to the reflector. (You can see the current grow in the front) The backside of the fan is left open until I get a carbon filter. This sucks the air from the tent at the top, while pulling fresh air through the passive intakes in the bottom. When the tent is fully zipped it sucks the canvas of the tent inwards. The fan is wired up to the low side. It's a beast!!!

Here they are right before the transplant. I took the best ones out of these. The rest are still in the veg closet. I used a 50/50 mix of MGMC/Pro-Mix BX. I needed a consistent soil to mix with the BX and MGMC fit the bill as far as amount of dirt vs. cost$$$. As you can imagine, I'm pretty broke after buying all the new gear.

And this is after the transplant. 13 so far. I plan on doing more tomorrow but I had to mix up more dirt and get more good water. I had to rework all the outlets in the room in order to get the right combination for everything to work. What a puzzle that was. Oh well, it all works now. I have them on a 20/4 light cycle.

Edited by DrGreenThumb (04/18/10 09:36 PM)

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