Live Stoner Chat Live Stoner Chat - Jan-Mar '23

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So this is basically the same bacteria thats in Hydroguard or Southern Ag Fungicide, but you get the added benefit of making homemade cheese! I may give it a shot, just to see how difficult it is. I'm imagining the cheese is similar to like soft goat cheese, which might be good.
 
:yoinks: 1500$ for 650 watts :nono::wall:
My sentiments exactly. Not necessary, and no guarantee that they would be any more reliable than lots of cheaper alternatives. I seriously doubt that there is anything out there more dependable than my screwins. No switches, no adjustment knobs, no central ballast to screw up, adjustable spectrum, adjustable intensity. And a whole pile less money than any of the commercial alternatives. There is as much marketing bs in that business as there is competition on function and reliability, IMO. :cheers:
 
more than one light, ideally 4:pighug:. You can also use more light than most grows have. PPFD at 10" (or sometimes less in these marketing par maps) is irrelevant. You want to hit the whole canopy with as similar a light level as possible from the tops to the dirt, and that is best done with the light farther from the top of the canopy, which means more watts than is often suggested. :biggrin:

If you don't want multiple lights, a bar design with wide distribution would be my choice. If my 4 diy arrays ever give me grief, a bar setup is likely what I would go for. I would be looking for ~600mmols/m2/sec across the space at no closer than 18" or so. The only issue with a single full sized bar setup is that you can't tailor height to different plants, and being able to do that can help.

I've been out of the market for a while, so have no useful specific recommendations on commercial products. However, if you are into some electrical DIY, you can put together perfectly functional lights for less money. The screwin arrays I use work well:

1. Each light has its own ballast, so ballast failures (even Meanwells go down occasionally) do not cause problems. Worst case, you need to replace a bulb, not a ballast that shut your grow down. The downside is the heat, but I need that anyway since I always have to add heat to my drobe anyway.
2. Spectrum is adjustable by choosing the mix of 5500k and 2700k lights, more of the former for more blue and shorter more compact plants, more of the latter for a bit more stretch. I don't fuss with UV, far red or infrared, I get more nice weed than I need without the fiddle.
3. The four arrays allow height adjustment to each of the 4 corner plants. What I typically do now is just screw all bulbs in and lift the light until I get the ppfd/dli I have in mind from as far away from the canopy as I can. This delivers the most light possible to the lower canopy, given my preferences for light levels at the top of the canopy.
4. If less light is needed than can be achieved by lifting lights, intensity and/or spectrum can be adjusted by unscrewing bulbs.

You could also build your own bar design by ordering strips, but at the cost of depending on ballasts whose failure could mess up a grow, and adjustability of spectrum is not often available except on expensive units. You could make 2 or 4 height adjustable arrays with strips as well if that was a priority.

Electrical DIY is not everyone's cuppa, but if you are up for it, there are advantages worth considering, especially if you want to keep the cost down. :pighug:

So you are saying you just have a bunch of screw in CFL bulbs?
 
The 3 older ones in my pics, I have heavily trimmed 3 times. Taken off about 80% of the big fan leaves, each time, and then the last trim I trimmed any small buds and anything below about 1/2 way up the plant. I want to see what happens when I just have them pump as much energy into the top buds as they can.
That's the way I go about it. Concentrate the growing energy to the best buds.
 
That's the way I go about it. Concentrate the growing energy to the best buds.

Yeah, I got about 2.5 ounces off my last plant. So I'm interested to see what I get here, after all that trimming. Will they make up for the losing the other buds? Or is it worth the extra time and pain in the butt?
 
Yeah, I got about 2.5 ounces off my last plant. So I'm interested to see what I get here, after all that trimming. Will they make up for the losing the other buds? Or is it worth the extra time and pain in the butt?
For me, it's not worth my time. I give most of my bud away so I'm not too vested in trimming little buds. There was a grow experiment on another site I was following. In the end, he got about the same about of bud but the plants he trimmed, had better looking and more dense buds than the other.
 
For me, it's not worth my time. I give most of my bud away so I'm not too vested in trimming little buds. There was a grow experiment on another site I was following. In the end, he got about the same about of bud but the plants he trimmed, had better looking and more dense buds than the other.

Thats what I assumed. Even a 10-15% loss would be ok in my eyes.
 
So you are saying you just have a bunch of screw in CFL bulbs?

close....he has a diy array of reg screwin led bulbz that he took the globez off of ;) i almost did similar once, but ended up gettin a couple lil chiwaineze 120w qb'z instead & they work a treat :cool1: ppp
 
close....he has a diy array of reg screwin led bulbz that he took the globez off of ;) i almost did similar once, but ended up gettin a couple chiwaineze 120w qb'z instead & they work a treat :cool1: ppp

ok, that makes more sense. So just regular LED light bulbs and remove the plastic diffuser?

Thats an interesting idea.

9 watt sylvanias are about $1.25 each.

But if I wanted a 2000 watt equivalent setup, I'd need 222 bulbs.

Dang.
 
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