Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3: Flowering a Plant with T5s & Fluorescent

[gangalicious]

Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluoroescents



Strain: Grape Ice

Plant Name: Flotsam (sister to Jetsam)

FFOFerlite ratio is 4:1 (80%/20%)

Nutes: General Organics BioThrive Bloom, high phosphorus guano. For veg, I used a little BioThrive Grow, kelp, and high phosphorus and high nitrogen guanos.

Tent: Secret Jardin dR80 (32x32x62inches). Exhaust fan is a 70cfm ultra quiet bathroom ventilation fan. It is rated at 1.0 sones. There is a slim oscillating tabletop fan blowing air into the canopy and also into the space between the lights and canopy.

Temp: generally 78-85F with lights on. I've got the lights about 2" from the canopy, so the tops are living at about 87-89F

Humidity: will probably be on the dry side for the rest of this grow. 41% right now. Will probably go lower as Summer approaches. Cool mist humidifier on standby.

Lights: She vegged completely under CFLs. For flowering, it's a panel of eight 24" T5 HO bulbs (of mixed spectrum) along with a couple of 55W 4000K fluorescent bulbs flanking the sides. I'll show more about the lights later.

History: a little pH trouble in her early days . . .

Took some time, but she made a nice recovery:

And here is a pic from a few days ago, at day 35:

Today is day 40, so I'll snap some more shots of her tonight and put up some more info on the lights.

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

The panel came with eight of the Eiko F24-T5/HO/835. The bulbs are listed at 3500K and appear yellowish to me. The folks at the hydro store called these their "bloom" bulbs for T5s. I was able to contact Eiko directly and they sent me a spectral power distribution for their tubes within a day. Amazing. But after looking at the graph, I was left wanting more! More power in the ganja range! (It's the area on the graph just above my little pile of ganja. Notice there are no peaks at all). I started flowering her anyway and began to search.

Eventually I stumbled upon a few interesting aquarium bulbs while surfing the net, so I visited a couple of local aquarium shops and pet stores . . . then bingo! I replaced two of the Eikos with Power-Glos (18000K) and one Eiko was swapped for a Colormax. Did this on day 32 of flowering. Then I rigged up the side lighting a few days after that, on day 36. I had this old 10000 lux therapeutic light box just sitting around, so why not put it to some use? Those bulbs are 55W each at 4000K.

And here is what she looked like tonight (Day40):

 

[palcah]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Great journal!! Love how you explain the light set-up and especially the Ganja illustration. Nice touch. Flotsam looks like a very happy lady and all grown up.

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Great journal!! Love how you explain the light set-up and especially the Ganja illustration. Nice touch. Flotsam looks like a very happy lady and all grown up.

See, a little pile of weed can even be used as a learning aid in helping to interpret a graph. Is there any end to the number of uses of this awesome plant?

Flotsam is doing all right, I'd say, and it seems like over the last couple of days she's begun to pick up the pace a bit. Looks like she's really enjoying the added light.

 

[palcah]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Great to hear she likes the lime light!

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Great to hear she likes the lime light!

Oh, yeaaah! She loooves it!

 

[Green Utopia]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Great plants and discussion of the lights!

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Great plants and discussion of the lights!

Thank YOU Papa Green for stopping by!

 

[Reefa Cheefa]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Great looking plant!! Keep it up man +rep

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Thanks for the compliment and the rep Reefa Cheefa!

 

[Vaporeyes]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Looking real nice Ganga, always love watching the t5 grows.... so all red spectrum in there?

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Looking real nice Ganga, always love watching the t5 grows.... so all red spectrum in there?

Hey Vapo, thanks for stopping in. There's actually a mix of tubes in there but, yes, every bulb is emitting some sort of energy in the red spectrum, some more than others though.

 

[quagland]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

hows the heat with the t5 compared to the CFL's? I was thinking of using that in my next cabinet.

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

hows the heat with the t5 compared to the CFL's? I was thinking of using that in my next cabinet.

Okay, this is a great question, but I don't have an easy answer for you.

First, here's my chance to explain something I think is important: heat is not the same thing as temperature. You should see some of the crazy talk on the LED boards because folks are confused and don't understand the difference and are using the terms interchangeably, and the next thing you know someone is gonna be posting something absurd like, "LEDs run hotter than the sun! It's a fact!" It's practically already gotten to that point. LOL!

It's probably best to think of heat as "an amount of energy" that is being moved from one place to another. Temperature is a measure of the average kinetic energy (the energy of motion) of particles. So, temperature is a measure of how fast particles are moving, and heat is a measure of how much energy is being moved from one place to another. Heat (energy in motion) will always naturally move from areas of higher temperature to areas of lower temperature. For example, if your finger (temp=98.6F) accidentally touches a hot stove top (temp=500F), energy will be spontaneously transferred from the stove (higher temp) to your finger (lower temp), and you will experience that as a burn because your skin tissue cannot handle that kind of energy.

A 4th of July sparkler can burn at a temperature of up to 3000F and cause severe burns if applied directly to the skin, but if you plunge a burning sparkler directly into a bathtub of cold water, does it heat the water to make a nice warm bath? Would it even warm up your cup of coffee? No, because the sparkler just doesn't have enough energy to transfer to the water to do that. However, if it was a massively enormous sparkler then, yes, it would heat the bath and then some, and it would probably be totally awesome.

A warm bath at 92F, because of its mass, will therefore have far more energy than the sparkler, even though the sparkler can burn at a temperature of 3000F. A scientist might say that the warm bath has more "heat energy" than the sparkler. Sometimes this confuses people because they think heat=temperature, and therefore falsely think the bath is "hotter" than the sparkler. It's not. And that is not what the scientist means.

That said . . .

The t5s put out a significant amount of heat, just like CFLs, but the heat is emitted over a larger area (think long, slim tubes with hot ends) compared to the CFLs, and so the temperature at the canopy (which is 2" below the panel or less), with just the t5s, runs 85-87F on average with my current setup, but that is without the side lighting. The tubes themselves do not seem to run at a very high temperature, so you can get the plants super close, just like with CFLs, but possibly even closer. The metal ends of the tubes are pretty hot (high temp), maybe not scorching, but fairly hot.

The net result is that the panel, along with the added side lights, puts out a good amount of heat, but this is easier to manage because I'm working in a larger space compared to the CFL cab.

So, yes, you will have to consider both heat and temperature if you decide to go with t5s, but how you manage those things will depend on your box size and other variables.

I hope that helps.

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Day 47:

Over the last several days I've noticed Flotsam's buds seem to be swelling at an increased rate. I hope she continues like this for the next 20 days!

 

[palcah]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Yowzabob Dude!! Flotsam is showing off her plumpy goodness that is for sure!! As for your Heat/Temp. thesis paper-LMAO-not b/c you are wrong but b/c you seem to have that information at the your fingertips. I for one enjoyed the science lesson especially the part about the "long, slim tubes with hot ends". IDK, sorry, being silly. I wish we had talked like that in my science classes.

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Yowzabob Dude!! Flotsam is showing off her plumpy goodness that is for sure!! As for your Heat/Temp. thesis paper-LMAO-not b/c you are wrong but b/c you seem to have that information at the your fingertips. I for one enjoyed the science lesson especially the part about the "long, slim tubes with hot ends". IDK, sorry, being silly. I wish we had talked like that in my science classes.

Hey palcah. Whassup. That little science "thesis" took me a long time to post, cuz I wuz baked outta my noggin! (j/k . . . no, seriously, I was). I should probably go re- re-read it again and make sure it's legit. Naw man, it's legit.

And after I craft such a beautiful essay on the differences between heat and temperature - a work so magnificently elegant in both form and function that even former presidents can understand it - what do you remember from that post?

Long, hot tubes. Wonderful.

LOL!

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Day 49 Update!



She's been in flowering for 7 weeks now. Under the CFLs this strain has historically showed me a lot of love and put on some nice weight during weeks 8 and 9, so I'm pretty excited.

Here are some pics from yesterday when I took her out of the tent.

 

[erwqew]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

Dude, that thing has a tree trunk supporting her up. Thats an awesome plant man.
I liked your bit on the diff between heat and light, very true. I will be checking in here often for more info and updates.

 

[gangalicious]

Re: Gangalicious Experimental Grow Lab, Part 3b: flowering a plant with T5s and fluor

I'd been noticing recently that Flotsam had been spreading out more and the branches were beginning to sag a bit, but yesterday I unzipped the tent and saw one bud pointing directly at me. Other buds had been gettin' a little sideways too, but this one was completely parallel with the ground. Yeah, and she was pointing directly at me as if to say, "that's just the way I rollz, baby! Laid back!" The branch is slightly cracked near the joint - and by "slightly" I, of course, mean "severely." She doesn't seem to mind too much.

These are day 53 pics. I am very happy with the weight she's been puttin on lately.

So I took my handy-dandy roll of twisty tie and got to work. Pretty much just tied branches to other branches. Took a while . . . cuz I wuz baked LOLz!

It was a lot of fun, though, and I think she's looks a lot less unruly. I can't wait until lights-on because she really seems to be kickin it into high gear, and I can really see the changes from day to day. Hopefully she'll continue like this for as long as possible, but I imagine she'll begin to slow her rate of expansion within the next 5-7 days. I'm going to feed her one more time (probably) and then think about flushing.