Hermies, Nanners, and a light cycle issue question

[desiBud420]

Hi ya'll!!

I have been reading up on hermies, Nanners and other reasons why a female might get stressed and go in that hemaphrodite direction.

I have a light cycle issue with 2 plants in my grow box exiting their 2nd week since sprouting. My 2areas of concern are as follows:

1) is the manual switch timer that takes care of the light cycles. Nipped it off Aliexpress for $7 and I recently noticed a 30 minute lag in a total of 24 hours cycle through the day. The timer reaches the complete 24 hour cycle I've set, but it reaches that point 30 minutes in advance of its actual deadline.
For example, I set my switch timer at 7am to do 18 hours light till 1am, then it goes into 6 hours darkness up till 6:30am. Is there generally a lag in timers? Mines manual, not digital and I wasn't aware these things could lag, unless I have a faulty one?? I think 30 minutes off the entire day EVERYday will eF with my plants during veg and flowering.

2) A second bigger problem I hAve is the electricity grid in this region is poor. Electricity goes offline for an hour every 2-3 hours daily. I have a backup generator to tackle the house, but there is a10 second lag from when the lights go off and generator kicks in., and happens for another 10 seconds after the hour is up and electricity switches from generator to grid. My question here is, will this 10 sec pause of light due to lag from generator delay (totalling a loss of only 1 minute and 20 seconds, but still 10 second interruptions of OFF time with switching electricity sources in those 10 seconds, eFf with my plants, or I'd it nominal at any stage?
I am looking to get a small UPS to eliminate that 10-sec gap everytime, but will take me a few days.



Any thoughts on my particular electricity situation here, or is UPS the only way to go?
Will this constant 10-sec interval twice an hour, every 3-4 hours screw with something ar my plants end?

Grow box stats: I have a tiny usb fan, one 85watt white light (400watt output), and recently stuck one 20watt warm light (100watt output), along with a PC fan I'm using as an exhaust. Will this put a load on my tiny ups? I'm not sure if it can handle the load. Currently I've got my old pentimento 4 PC and a dell flat screen monitor attacked that the ups handles. Battery is pretty weak (picked it for $12 locally and it gave me 6-8 months thorough for the PC/monitor. Now it will last long enough for that 10-second switch to generator, but not sure if it can handle my grow box watt usage. I need to check how much my PC might be taking to make a comparison with the grow box total watt usage.

If someone could tell me what to look for on the battery to measure things up technicLly I'd be happy to oblige and anything else that needs answering.

 

[Ricky Bobby]

I don't know about the timer. Mine are manual and work as they should. Might try just getting a new one for how cheapthey are.

The darkness for 10 sec here and there is not going to have any effect on the plants. They are not that picky.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Yeah I'd get another timer. I use digital ones generally, so I can count on the light schedule being roughly the same every day. If there is a power outage- I'd rather lose some daylight but have my next 'day' start at the exact same time, than have the timer itself shut down and then start up again at whatever random time the power goes back on, rearranging the plant's entire schedule.
During veg - these issues do not matter. Or at least, they barely matter. Once I had some vegging plants, under 18/6, start to flower as a result of a bunch of power outages and light interruptions on my part. That was only once though in years of playing it pretty loose with the veg lighting.
During flowering- these interruptions do matter. You should try to keep the plant in 12/12 (or whatever variation of flowering schedule you use) at the same times each day- with no changes or interruptions, as much as possible. I think if you can avoid that 10 second interruption you should. I've had plenty of nanner problems from light leaks and interruptions- as well as revegging (busted timer).
I do get lots of power outages from weather. They haven't caused the flowering plants to do anything weird. I think nailing the basic on/off times down to a regular schedule with the digital timers helps keep the plants from getting too confused.

 

[desiBud420]

I don't know about the timer. Mine are manual and work as they should. Might try just getting a new one for how cheapthey are.

The darkness for 10 sec here and there is not going to have any effect on the plants. They are not that picky.

Hi Ricky,

Thanks for your feedback. I found a YouTube video before my post where this guy had a faulty light that flickered for a few hours before he discovered it doing that. The flickering over time (much longer than my predictable situation) caused his plant stress in the flowering stage, which led to Nanners. Have a look

I get a mixed bag of results where some say it's no big deal, but others swear by taking measures and precautions even for a smidgen of anything off-track from perfect growing conditions.

I can breath a bit easy, but still kinda choking as my problem isn't going away without a ups to take care of the electricity switch, and if I calculate a loss of 30 minutes a day for 8 weeks, I begin to see the seriousness of the light deprivation as a whole: I lose 1,680 minutes from my entire light ON timeline. After doing a bit of calculation, maybe it's not such a big deal, but then do plant genetics come into play? I get a ratio of 1:49 as follows. Pls bare with me my OCD aid kicking in..

=> 30 minutes/day + 80 seconds, is total time lost with timer and electricity fluctuations
=> 1,880 secs/day X 7 days/week
=> 13,160 secs/week X 8 weeks(avg. Veg./Flower time)
=> 105,280 secs/2 months (divided by 60 for minutes)
=> 1,754.667 mins/2 months (divided by 60 again for total hours reading)
=> 29.244 hours of total light loss over a spread time of 2 months (1,440 hours)
=> a ration of (in hours):: 29.244:1,440 becomes==> 1:49.24

I just HAD to calculate 5that to see a ratio comparison of light loss to total plant time on average.

I guess the total light ON loss is not that bad spread out over 2 months, instead of a complete light cycle unbalance stressing the plants out. Hmmm..

 

[desiBud420]

Yeah I'd get another timer. I use digital ones generally, so I can count on the light schedule being roughly the same every day. If there is a power outage- I'd rather lose some daylight but have my next 'day' start at the exact same time, than have the timer itself shut down and then start up again at whatever random time the power goes back on, rearranging the plant's entire schedule.
During veg - these issues do not matter. Or at least, they barely matter. Once I had some vegging plants, under 18/6, start to flower as a result of a bunch of power outages and light interruptions on my part. That was only once though in years of playing it pretty loose with the veg lighting.
During flowering- these interruptions do matter. You should try to keep the plant in 12/12 (or whatever variation of flowering schedule you use) at the same times each day- with no changes or interruptions, as much as possible. I think if you can avoid that 10 second interruption you should. I've had plenty of nanner problems from light leaks and interruptions- as well as revegging (busted timer).
I do get lots of power outages from weather. They haven't caused the flowering plants to do anything weird. I think nailing the basic on/off times down to a regular schedule with the digital timers helps keep the plants from getting too confused.

Hey WC!

Glad to hear that veg won't affect it as much. So I have some time before I get rid of that 10-sec gap issue before flowering kicks in. Is your digital timer running on batteries or plugged into the mains? I may have to reorder mine, but I think I'll go with the digital one this time. How long do batteries last in yours if it's a battery model?

@Robby: does your manual timer fall out by any amount of time per day? Even if it's a few minutes, have you ever timed the manual timer to see how accurate it is? I am using my iPhones countdown and keeping tabs on the manual timer. With 7 hours left until a full 24 hour cycle since I started my iPhone countdown timer, it's already off by 30 minutes. Shit.