Delps 8 Hydro RDWC Gelato Autoflower 2021

[Delps8]

Growth Stage - seedling

How Long - 5 days in Rapid Rooters
Germination start - 9/21/21
First sprouted - 9/23/21
Into the res - RSN

Water source - RO
Indoor or Outdoor - indoor, unheated garage in SoCal
Grow Type - hydro

Tent - Using a Super Sprouter with Rapid Rooters for germination in a 2' x 4' Gorilla tent
Reservoir Size - 35 gals to bottom of 3" net pots
Reservoir Temperature - 68° (Active Aqua chiller)
Medium - water. Seedlings germinating in Rapid Rooters.

Watering schedule - enough to keep the RR's moist

Nutes - Using Rapid Start at 50% normal strength during germination. Will be using Botanicare Kind "expert" nutes. They did well for my previous grow. I've got plenty of nutes left over and I'll use the extras until they're gone.

Hydro Setup - RDWC, top feed.
Size (Wattage) of Light:
18" 6400k 17 watt grow light T5 that came with the Super Sprouter. PPFD of 70 µm.
Mars Hydro SP 3000, white light LED, dimmable
Growcraft X3 330, white light LED, dimmable

Tent Climate:
Temperature - had a warm day (91°) this week and tent temp is still 80°
RH - 70±% controlled by Inkbird RH controller ("Wetbird")
pH - 5.8

Pests - None known - had aphids and thrips in late flower for last grow. Once was more than enough.

Goodies:
Active Aqua water chiller (1/10 hp)

Whynter 14k portable A/C
Waykar 4500 sq. ft. dehumidifier

Kasa Smart strips
Inkbird RH controller ("Wetbird")
Inkbird Temperature controller ("Hotbird")

Pets Pioneer Reptile Humidifier Digital
700 watt oil-filled heater

PulseOne sensor
Bluelab pH, EC, and temperature monitor
BlueLab Grower's Kit with EC pen + TDS pen
Apogee MQ-500 quantum meter

Trupow 1/10HP 330GPH electric pump for res swaps
Good Ideas Imp-L50-TC Impressions Palm Rain Barrel (50 gallon cistern) for RO
HydroLogic 150 GPD RO unit


My grow of 4 Gorilla Glue autos finished about a month ago. Last grow was "a jungle" - too many plants in the tent and I had a beast of a time trying to do any LST because of all of the foliage. That was OK until it wasn't. I got a thrip + aphid infestation in late flower. I used a spray on the plants but, with all the foliage in the tent, allI coulod do was keep them in check. The infestation was bad enough to cause the plants to lose a few inches in height.

Ealerier in the year, prior to that grow, I managed to kill off two sets of seedlings. I was using a Kind LED 600XL from the grow I did in 2017 and I was careful to keep it at the recommended height. And not enough light is what did me in.

After a few emails back and forth with Kind, they sent me the PPFD map for the light I was using and I found it quite interesting. The next step after looking at the PPFD chart was to put the Kind back in its box. And then I put the box in the trash and started looking for a grow light.

The light I ended up with was a Mars SP3000 and it did fine by me. A couple of months ago, I got a Growcraft X3 at a very good price which means I've got the SP3000 as a spare. The Mars has quite a bit of blue in its spectrum so I'm teaming the Mars with the 18" T5 CFL (even more blue) that came with the SuperSprouter. That'll do well for veg.

A few changes since the previous grow. The res now sits on a riser held up by cinder blocks. The extra height makes it a little easier for me to work in the res. I've labeled all of the electrical cords and extended the power cord for the driver in the Mars so the driver and dimmer are outside the tent.

With those changes to the equipment it was time to get growing so I soaked three seeds overnight and got them in the Rapid Rooters on 9/21/21. A couple of the seeds have sprouted in the past three days but seed #3 is lagging way behind.

Winnie (#1) popped her head up on 9/23/21. I upped the light level and Mary (seed #2) showed up the next morning. Sarah is AWOL.

One problem - one of Winnie's leaves was rotated from 0° (flat) to 90° and the two nascent, first true leaves were shriveled the day after she popped. The only cause could have been too much light so I shut off the Mars, leaving just the T5. That dropped DLI from 13 to 4.3 for the remainder of the day yesterday (lights were on 18/6). As of this afternoon (9/26/21) Winnie is looking a lot better so I've upped the PPFD to 94 and I've scheduled lights out to get to a DLI of 7.

There are two extra RR's in the SuperSprouter, under the cardboard. Yesterday, with Winnie having been hit by too much light and with seed #3 being AWOL, I decided to hedge my bets so I dropped the last two seeds Gelato seeds into RR's, soaked them, and put them in the SuperSprouter. As of now, it looks like Winnie will make it so I may end up with a few extra seedlings.

 

[Tokin Roll]

Very nice start to your grow journal @Delps8 .

If you don't mind I'll have a stool by the band.

Stay safe, and grow well my friend,

Tok..

 

[Delps8]

Very nice start to your grow journal @Delps8 .

If you don't mind I'll have a stool by the band.

Stay safe, and grow well my friend,

Tok..

Thanks! and thanks for checking in.

 

[Delps8]

For the last couple of months of my GG grow, the temps were high enough that I needed to to run a big Whynter 14k BTU portable AC unit. It sounded like a hovercraft every time I walked in the garage. It got old. And now? Nada. It's nice and quiet but it seems if I listen very closely, I can hear the photons dropping on the leaves. What a beautiful sound!

The weather has cooperated and, since I'm not in flower, temps in low 80's are fine by me. The heater will be going in the tent shortly.

The plants - seed #3 es muerto. It never came out of the shell so I tossed it. The two "standby" seeds are doing pretty well but, based on how Winnie and Mary are doing, I won't need the second set. I have been adding too much water, though. The RR's were soaked so I squeezed water out of both of them so they're moist but not wet.

I'm still using the weak batch of RapidStart and the plants are doing well with it. Above ground looks great and they're growing a fair number of roots so it'll be "everyone in the pool" no later than Saturday.

DLI was 9.2 yesterday. I was a bit wary after Winnie's light burn but that's over and done with. Today's DLI will be 11.5. Same PPFD but I'm switching from 18/6 to 24/0.

 

[Delps8]

"I will not chase pH."*100

No pix of the kids. No biggie. They're pretty much the same as yesterday - little green plants, a couple of sets of small leaves, nowhere ready for harvest even though it's been almost a week, etc.


Got the kids in the res yesterday. The humidifier is running to stave off the Santa Anas, Bluelab is working, pumps pumping, water chiller chilling water. Winnie and Mary are doing great and even Mutt and Jeff are coming along (Mutt and Jeff are from the two seeds that I planted when I didn't know if Winnie and Mary would recover from too much light).

So, yup, we're lookin' good.

I set up the Mars at 140 µm and went to 20/4. That's not a huge DLI but I didn't want to launch a photon torpedo at these little guys.

After that, I spent time checking out stuff out here on 420 and a few other places and, with pumpkin time coming up, I decided to check the perimeter one last time. The res was in great shape - water temp at 68 (it was 79 when I first filled it), EC just where I wanted it at 210/500 (wow, if I express PPM as a fraction that keeps both the "gotta do EC" crowd and the "what's EC?" crowd happy), and pH was 5.8.

Checked the Bluelab when I woke up - EC at 210/500, water at 68, and pH at…6.3. Huh?!

Unless someone added Up while I was nighty nite, there's something happening here and what it is ain't exactly clear. Trying to think this through - pH goes up as plants take up nutes, if there's a bio mass in the res, and, to an unspecified extent, as air bubbles through a res and the CO2 in the makes the water less base. So, what is going on here?

What we know:
1-there are no plants taking up nutes (or anything else). The roots haven't come near the nute solution.
2-the res was filled for the first time and it was clean. Given that the starting water temp was 79°, I added 3 CC Hydroguard/gallon instead of the recommended 2 so I don't think that's the issue. There is no visible bio mass in the res.
3-I'm using the same air pump and air stones that I was using in my previous grow. The air stones were treated with a bleach solution after the last grow. The air pump has been running since the filled the res.

Given the above, am I seeing the "acid rain" effect? Could be!

Ironically, after my GG grow ended, I toyed with the idea of doing an experiment about "acid rain". My thinking was to convince Pulse to loan me a PulsePro so I could log C02 and then hit up Bluelab for their data logger version of their monitor. My plan was to run two week-long monitoring sessions, one with the air pump running and one with the pump not running. Granted, without plants in the res, that reduces the usability of the results but it would have provided some data of value. A starting point, at least, After thinking about it for a bit, I nixed that idea because…well…I just didn't feel like doing it.

And then! You just never know what opportunities life will bring you and, as it turns out, this is now my opportunity to conduct that experiment, albeit on a much briefer timeline and without swapping the res between sessions.

As of 10 AM, I added 3 CC Down to get the res to 5.8 and I shut off the air pump. That does mean that the seedlings won't be getting their toes tickled by the bubbles from the air pump. Instead, I'll have just the top feed running from time to time and will count on the plant roots remembering to grow toward gravity. They'll figure it out.

And, here we are at 3 PM. Six hours later the pH is unchanged. Given that the drop took place over night last night, I won't turn the air pump on until 1000 tomorrow.

 

[Delps8]

Well, well, well.

I left the air pump off for 24 hours and TDS, water temp, and pH were unchanged. Within an hour of starting up the air pump, pH went from 5.9 to 5.9 and then to 6.0 another hour later. At that point, I shut off the air pump. So, in this little experiment, a res with no plants in it did have a rise in pH when air is bubbled through it. That's nothing new but what surprised me was that it went from 5.8 to 6.3 overnight (on Saturday) and then from 5.8 to 6.0 in a couple of hours today.

One of the reasons why I'm concerned is that I don't recall this happening in the grow I did a few months ago and, though I didn't capture it in my grow journal, I'm pretty sure that I started the air pump as soon as I put the seedlings in the res — after all, it is of an inherent part of RDWC. I did have the Bluelab running for my previous grow and, as my grow journal from that grow will reveal, I'll put it charitably by saying that I was pretty attuned to issues with the res (that's much nicer than saying I ran around with my hair on fire for a few months) and I neither recall this issue nor did I journal it.

All in all, I'm a little bit weirded out by this. Why would this be happening on this grow when everything is so similar to my last grow and also similar to a bazillion RDWC grows that you folks have run?

 

[Delps8]

Was thinking about this issue tonight and realized a had things bass ackwards. pH is rising but I played out the symptoms for ph dropping. Oy.
Did a little experiment - at about 1230, I disconnected one set of hoses that had new tubing that I added as an extension. It was a long shot idea that perhaps the new tubing was causing the issue. After about 45 minutes, air pushed through one set of airstones (a 4" cylinder and a 2" cylinder) was able to raise pH from 5.9 to 6.0. Next step is to remove the air stones. Then get some sleep.

 

[Rexer]

Hey delps!

What's your current PPM?

 

[Delps8]

210/500 with is about 25% strength of Botanaicaire Kind Expert menu. I think that's too low and intend to bring it up this weekend.

Extra HydroGuard because the water out of the cistern was 79° and I knew it would take the water chiller a few hours to get the temperature to a reasonable.

Top feed ruins twice a day for one minute.

 

[Rexer]

If your at 200 PPM that might explain the quicker ph swings.

The nutes basically act or have ph stabilizers in them. When they're in a low concentration, it's take much less to swing the PH.

As the plants consume the nutes in the water, especially if there is a good water/nute level drop, the PH can swing a bit depending on what the plants have consumed. It's gets a bit too heavy into chemistry for me to fully understand. If you Google search, manicbotanix, they're is a ton of info on hydroponics and ph.


I ph adjust mine twice a day to keep the ph in check. Every morning and every evening. The overnight always has the biggest climb, however if I were to skip the evening ph adjustment I would reach past the 6.5 mark and start seeing nutrient uptake issues.

A ph rise from the airpump is expected, and normal from my experience.

Hope some of that helps.

Just double check your temps are in range, no light leaks allowing algea, and plenty of air. Don't shut the airstones off in a dwc/rdwc. At that point it becomes a Kratky grow, which is different then dwc/rdwc.

 

[Delps8]

Temp is 68° and steady. PPM is 210/500 steady.
pH rises only when air is bubbled and climbs 0.1 within 60 minutes.

I’m toying with the idea of increasing TDS so that there are more nutes and, therefore, more buffers. I need to make the time tonight to do that (busy busy with work). In addition, this is a res that has no roots in it so that interaction is absent. That could be the cause but, if that was the case, why didn’t this happen in the previous grow? Did I miss a huge overnight rise in pH? As I mentioned above, I freaked out about pretty much and jot and tittle last time — how would i have missed this? (I was too busy freaking out about other things, perhaps? ;-). )

 

[Delps8]

Yes, this could be much ado about nothing in that increasing TDS and adding roots will resolve it. What strikes me as strange is that, had this occurred in my GG grow of a few months back, which started in a very, very similar way, I believe that I would have noticed the jump in pH.
Thanks for the input. I’ll bump the TDS tonight and give it another whirl. If I need to add Down for a while, I guess I’ll need to add Down for a while.

 

[Delps8]

Refer:

Thanks for the feedback. I’m putting out a new software release while trying to read this thread (two hands, two tasks) so I missed this text, which goes right to the heart of the issue:

"I ph adjust mine twice a day to keep the ph in check. Every morning and every evening. The overnight always has the biggest climb, however if I were to skip the evening ph adjustment I would reach past the 6.5 mark and start seeing nutrient uptake issues.

A ph rise from the airpump is expected, and normal from my experience."

 

[Rexer]

Refer:

Thanks for the feedback. I’m putting out a new software release while trying to read this thread (two hands, two tasks) so I missed this text, which goes right to the heart of the issue:

"I ph adjust mine twice a day to keep the ph in check. Every morning and every evening. The overnight always has the biggest climb, however if I were to skip the evening ph adjustment I would reach past the 6.5 mark and start seeing nutrient uptake issues.

A ph rise from the airpump is expected, and normal from my experience."

No worries brother, seems to be slightly different for everyone. I think some experience it much less, but things like what is being used to ph down (the chemical) makes a difference as well.

 

[Delps8]

Ok, update on the kids. The goal was to have two viable seedlings in the res. After 4 Gorilla Glue plants did a cage match, I want learn good plant training techniques so I've planned on only two plants in the 2' x 4' space.

The names of the first round of seedlings was from Hocus Pocus - Winnifred, Mary, and Sarah. I hit them with a lot of light and Winnie, especially, was looking pretty bad for a couple of days so I added "The Bench", AKA Mutt and Jeff. Sarah never germinated so she left the building and now Winnie, Mary, Mutt, and Jeff are in the res.

Mutt and Jeff were a few days behind Winnie and Mary but they've caught up. For reasons I won't yammer on about, they the sit in the res, left to right, as Winnie, Mutt, Mary, and Jeff. And Winnie was looking a little peaked at 180 nmol so I backed the light down to about 170. Yes, the Apogee wasn't cheap but I can set the lights to ± 1 nmol and there's some (perceived) value in that. Winnie is at about 165 nmol because of the light fall off at that end of the Mars SP 3000 and Mutt, Mary, and Jeff are kicking ass at 170 nmol.

I noticed that Winnie was off her game only this AM but, by turning down the Mars by a few watts (the Mars is on a Kasa smart strip and I can see the power draw change as I turn the dimmer) and by raising the left side of the Mars, I'm able to get a 5 nmol difference between two adjacent plants. Within a few hours, Winnie's drooping leaves are now horizontal and she's now she's out there looking green and mean.

And what about pH? What about all the sturm and drang about pH frying the seedlings? It seems to have turned out to be much ado about nothing. The only change in the tent, besides being another day older which could, perhaps, have some impact, is that I swapped out the air pump for the spare air pump that I bought back in 2017. It's been sitting in the box, unopened, for a bit over 4 years and, trying to remove the variables, I swapped that one in for the air pump that I was using (same model) this morning. pH has remained stable for about 12 hours. No change. Zero. DFA.

I have no reason to think that the air pump, in and of itself, was causing pH to rise but I do know that pH hasn't changed in half a day and, just never buy another grow light from Kind, the odds of me putting the other air pump back in service are exactly zero.

I need to order another air pump as a hot spare. And then it's back to making this another Maytag-repairman-level-of-excitement grow.

More good news - it's way past the time for aphids and thrips and the biggest issue I now face is that we're getting into Fall time. Temps in SoCal, like the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has experienced for about 15 years, is trending slightly cooler than "normal" temps so I'll be moving the heater into the tent to get the LST up into the 80's.

Family portrait time.

 

[Delps8]

No worries brother, seems to be slightly different for everyone. I think some experience it much less, but things like what is being used to ph down (the chemical) makes a difference as well.

That is a variable - I suspect that the air pump is a non-issue. It I accept that then the other issue is 5± CC of Down. And that caused pH to stop rising? Given that there just aren't that many other variables, well, you could be on to something.

I don't like to "solve the symptom" - in the long haul, that approach can lead to very negative outcomes. In this case, I'm all for "declare victory and move on".

PS - to the reading audience (I kid, I kid) Rexer has been a valuable sounding board via PM. Once again, amigo, a public many thanks.

 

[Delps8]

Just plain damned weird. pH has been risen from 5.8 to 5.9. In that lasts day and a half. I think that's within the margin of error for the Bluelab. So what was the pH rise about? No idea. It's in the rear view mirror, as far as I'm concerned.
All four plants have roots outside the net pots but none are in the water yet. Res in the water is crystal clear. That'll change in a few weeks but it's nice to see things clean water bubbling away.
Bumped the PPFD to an average of 204 and will shut the Mars off between 0200 and 0600.
TDS is still 210/500 and the plants are doing fine with that. Leaves on three of the plants are horizontal but Winnie is drooping a bit. All four seedlings are doing so well, it's going to take some time to figure out which one (or two) won't make the cut.

 

[Delps8]

It’s only been a few days since the last update but it’s been a loooong few days because of work. While I’ve been slaving away over a keyboard, Winnie, Mutt, Mary, and Jeff have been quietly doing their thing. It’s really nice to walk out to the tent and not have the Whynter sounding like a hover check.

Now? The only sound is the hum of the air pump. Yup, the same air pump that pushed pH to from 5.8 to 6.3 is now retired. When I did my first grow back in 2017, I bought a hot spare backup air pump. After making some changes to the air lines and air stones, I swapped in the “hot spare”. pH went to 6.0 and stopped. It’s been at 6.0 for, what, a week?

So the pH issue appears to be resolved. What’s next? I spotted some light yellow spots on a leaf Jeff. I still shudder when I think about aphids and thrips so I got out the 60x loupe and checked the undersides of some of the leaves. Nothing unusual to see. I decided that my solution to another attack of aphids would include napalm.

The first set of names were Winnie, Mary, and Sarah which are the names of the witches from Hocus Pocus. When I thought I might have pooched Winnie with too much light, I planted “the Bench”, AKA Mutt and Jeff, so those guys are a few days younger than Winnie and Mary. (Yes, Sarah didn’t make it so I ended up with 4 out of 5 seeds germinating.)
Well Mutt and Jeff are doing great and Winnie has recovered so I’ve now got four viable seedlings in a 2’ x 4’ tent. I’m thinking that two plants is OK and three is a stretch.

The plants are 20 days since germination and, it looks like Winnie and Mary are almost ready to be topped. That sounds kinda weird because they look really small to me. Check out the pix. During my GG auto grow, I whinged about them being “LSF’s” (“little short f**ers”). I think I’m at that point again. Check out the pix for Winnie and Mary.

It looks like Mary is four nodes tall. Could someone sanity check that for me?

Winnie looks to be right there at four nodes, as well. Yes, no, maybe?

It’s hard for me to grok that plants that are this…delicate looking are pretty much ready to be topped and/or to start LST. I’d appreciate feedback about that.

Mutt and Jeff are developing really well, too.

TDS is 210/500 with no res change. There are good roots in the water - 1’ or so.
pH is sitting at 6.0. I should drop it to 5.8 and see if it rises.
PPFD is 250 nmoles and I did 23/1 last night (DLI of 21). Interestingly, there’s a light fall off of 5nmoles on the left side of the light, directly over Winnie. I’ll add a bit more light. "I'm Giving Her all she's got Captain!"

I’ve attached a DLI chart that I’m using as a guide. If anyone has more suggestions about DLI for autos, do tell. That came from the website of the company that sells Photone, IIRC.

Oh, yeh - I’m running the Mars SP 3000 now because it’s got more blue. I was using the T5, as well, but got the PAR map for the T5 from Sunblaster and discovered that it’s got far more green than blue. With that, I unplugged the T5 and put it in the box. Green light triggers that "shade avoidance” mechanism so the plants will stretch toward the light. I can see why Sunblaster wants that - they sell lights to the broader market and I’d guess that people want to see tall seedlings. For me, I’ll be happy to have LSF’s with tight internodal spacing.

I guess I’ll keep the Mars running for a few more weeks and then switch over to the Growcraft. BTW, they’ve got their 500 watt X3 on sale - two lights for $1k. That’s a hell of a light - more than I need - and the price is hard to beat.

And I’ve included a picture of my pruning tools. No, I don’t really use the hedge trimmer but now that I think about it… ;-)

 

[Delps8]

Measuring PPFD at various places in the canopy. Plants are 4” and 12” left and right of center. I used 350 µmols as my PPFD for DLI calculations but found significant variances in the actual values. Some of the variance may be due to moving off the center axis of the light but that is a very small amount. The bigger issue is that PPFD values change simply because, even with a 4" tall plant, the second set of leaves is further from the light than the topmost leaves. The difference is < 2" but that's enough to drop significantly reduce the number of photons hitting the leaves. I noticed the change while taking measurements but don't want that as part of the data - I'm trying to figure out what the PPFD is for the plants and then adjust the light environment (illumination time, hang height, and dimmer setting) to get the desired DLI.

Highest PPFD about 350 but there’s significant variance from the center of the plant to the front or back. This is the Mars SP 3000 at a hang height of 15”. Raising the light will tend to reduce the st dev but I don’t have detailed PPFD data for this light so I’m going to use the average value of 303 instead of 350.

I’m eager to get the X3 into the tent but I also want to keep the SP 3k running because it has more blue light than the X3. Using data from ppfdcharts.com, I created a chart for the X3 that shows the st dev for PPFD vs hang height. The goal is to determine the evenness of the light along under the center of the light at various hang heights. This data is of value in the very early stages of growth because the PPFD measurements are only from a narrow strip under the center of the light. As the plants grow, they’ll be getting light further and further off axis so plotting that will take some learning on my part. Despite the narrowness of the data set that I used, the image below is an interesting metric and, unless Growcraft has produced a light that has low uniformity, I would expect (“assume”!) that the curve shown below is roughly representative of light falloff as one moves away from center in either axis.

At 6” hang height, the light uniformity is pretty good. If I raise the light even a couple of inches, the light on the canopy gets uneven and the st dev doesn’t match the value at 6” until the light is cranked to 20”. Once over 20”, the light on the canopy becomes far more uniform but the increased height requires significantly more wattage to get the same output as one does at a hang height of 6”.

 

[Delps8]

Been away for a while, trying to ID an issue that started with Mutt and Jeff and has turned out to be a self-inflicted CalMag issue. I use a "feed sheet" to determine the amount of nutes to add to my 28 gallon trash can that I use to make nutes. The first step is to create a feed sheet to create 4 gallons at 100%. That yields the TDS for a 100% concentration of that blend of nutes and I use that to calculate the quantities of nutes needed to hit a given TDS.

Feed Sheet

When I print the area on the left, the last column is blank and that's where I add write down the PPM after adding each nute to the 4 gallon bucket. That's a good safety check for the next weeks' res - if the figures don't match, I've screwed up. For these nutes, PPM is 1100/500 so I use that to figure out the amounts needed to hit the desired TDS.
It works out really well. I ended up with the new res at 335/500.

The problem with CalMag continues. The plants are getting really bushy and I'm trying to do some LST so it's not easy to keep track what leaves are where but a fan leaf on Mary is worse today than yesterday.
I swapped the res yesterday and pH rose over night 5.7 to 6.2 early this AM - great! And then started dropping and hit 5.8 by noon. Shit.
WonderChart tells me to lower EC if EC is below 1.4 or to raise EC is it's below 1.0. So, no guidance if it's between those values and, I suspect the EC values are for photos so, in this situation, WC doesn't give me any help. I switched to Son of WC and falling, static, falling ==> change res and drop EC. Looking back through my journal, with the exception of yesterday, any time TDS went over 310/500, I saw pH dropping. After the new res yesterday, pH when up but it came right back after about 18 hours. That's why I've dropped TDS to "pisswater" levels. I'm not going to change the res but I did drop the TDS to 290/500.
A few balls up in the air - CalMag issue, pH falling, and 4 plants in a 2' x 4' tent.

Oh, I took the Mars SP 3000 out of the tent and brought in the Growcraft. The Mars has far more blue than the X3 so I used that, and the little SuperSprouter CFL, in the early stages. Now that the plants are well into veg, I've switched to the X3. One of the plants, Winnie, is incredibly compact and dense. That a factor in my decision as to what to keep in the tent - I don't want another jungle grow so I've been leaning toward just two plants but, if I'm in another situation where one of the plants is markedly smaller than the other, it might be OK to do 2 + pequeña.