Light leaks in grow tent

[MehGreenThumb]

Hi all,

My understanding is that light leaks are BAD, primarily because they confuse/stress the plant and cause can create hermaphrodites. Obviously, many people grow outdoors where there is light from stars, the moon, etc; and to that end, I've read that as long as the light is fairly consistent (i.e. always been there), it's OK.

I grow indoors in a grow tent. I've duct-taped over everything with a light, except ... oops, missed some new items. Curious how concerned I should be, and can I just leave it or should I fix it.

1) I have a Bayite BTC201temperature controller. This has a display showing the current temperature and trigger temperature. (Google "Bayite BTC201" for pics.) It's a RED display. Not super bright, but not dim either. Currently covered.

2) I have a Gain Express WQM-242 5-in-1 PH EC CF TDS PPM Temperature test meter. (Google "Gain Express WQM-242" for pics). It has black letters on a blue display. I forgot to cover it, although it's mounted high in the tent. I need to look at the display very frequently, and clearly it's intended for use in grow rooms/tents. Cables are long, but not long enough. Mounting it outside the tent would be tricky. Is it OK emitting a little blue light, or do I need to cover it (maybe opaque sinching bag)?

3) Lots of tiny red / green LED lights on fans and power strips. I tape over those.

4) Red led display on heater. Greed led display on dehumidifier, and red indicator lights.

5) I'm using "Advanced Platinum Series P600" LED grow lights. I was just thinking "yikes" these have RED LEDs inside the on/off switches and I never covered them. But - duh, they're on a timer that cuts power; so I guess that answers that question.


For an indoor grow / grow tent, how paranoid is everyone with respect to light leaks created by consistent in-tent electronics? Are there any rules, e.g. green and blue light is OK, but red is bad? I only had hermies on my 1st grow - and I probably stressed the plants from a plethora of love and attention. I had 5 plants and "learned" on them. Some got topped, some FML, some LST, some HST; so this is more of a proactive curiosity question that an issue I'm trying to solve.

RE: Night Vision / IR

I'd like to set up a camera in the grow tent to make a time lapse. The camera uses IR for "night vision". What effect will this have on the plant?

Thanks, everyone! Happy growing.

 

[CanadianJim]

If you decide to make the tent darker by covering the light sources that won't harm your plant.
I have read that ir is not photosynthetically active, and some growers use night vision/ir cameras to check their temps and such in the tent without issue. I don't have any personal experience with that, I'm not really interested in watching plants in the dark, lol.
By the way, what is FML? I only know that as "fuck my life".

Edit: is that related to quadlining?

 

[MehGreenThumb]

Thanks. Certainly, you can't go wrong eliminating all light, aiming for total darkness. I'm just curious how much effort I should put toward that goal. I'm growing (sorry) tired of pealing tape back to peek at displays.

Re: IR, I'm aware there's some debate about IR. Some grow lights have it as an added bullet point/feature, so I'm assuming it has some effect (other than heat), which leads me to think it might not be the best idea to be blasting IR all night when the main lights are off. That said, those making the timelapse videos seem to have beautiful healthy plants, so worst case, it's not THAT bad. Right?

Oops, FML is a typo. I was going for FIM. Sorry 'bout that.

 

[013]

Yes cover all of those indicator lights regardless of the color, some need multiple layers of tape to dim them out properly.

FML?? I’m guessing they meant FIM or “fuck I missed” is what thats means. It’s basically same as light topping but only pinching the top pair not to remove the leaves but to deform them thereby encouraging the plant to double up on number of tops or colas. It’s kinda of low stress topping if there’s such a thing,

It’s a 3rd cousin twice removed from quadlining.

 

[CanadianJim]

Yeah, I don't think the night vision on a camera would be strong enough to worry to much about. If you want to do it, go for it.
I've tried fimming plants, but I missed and just ended up with a level of messed up leaves, so I topped 'em.
I've been growing for a while, but I only started using forums like this one recently. I thought maybe FML was a technique I hadn't heard of yet. Or a crazy new name for an old technique.

 

[MehGreenThumb]

I appreciate the replies. So, yeah, I guess I'll just block all light. The only tricky light source is the PH/PPM meter display. Hopefully, I can position things such that I can move it out of the tent.

 

[TorturedSoul]

outdoors where there is light from stars, the moon

That's not an issue because it's dimmer than a mentally retarded oyster whose mother and father were also its aunt and uncle. The stars don't go away in the daytime, you just can't see them because they're so dim. The sunlight reflecting off of the moon is brighter, of course - but it's still pretty dim. Now man-made light pollution outdoors, on the other hand, can and will f*ck with the flowering process, depending on how bright (and close) it is.

When a full Moon around perigee (a "supermoon") is viewed around upper culmination from the tropics, the illuminance can reach up to 0.32 lux. From Earth, the apparent magnitude of the full Moon is only about 1⁄380,000 that of the Sun.