Lighting Issues?

My advice wasn't meant to be condescending at all, but if you choose to take it that way, so be it. I am just not here to pull punches and pretend like I don't think what I am thinking. Many may have worried about hurting your feelings. I may have done that, but you should understand that I've been doing this for a long time and have had a lot of failures of my own. My own starting grow was pathetic, and you're on a much better track than I was. I just know that the pain my words may inflict is nothing compared to the pain of dead plants. That is what I mean about approaching this grow with the right sort of humility. I still ask people for advice about things and I've been doing this for 6 years now. I'm no better than you, you're no better than me. I was never saying anything of the sort.

Anyway, the 17W T8 fluoros are great, but you need a lot of them. Wal-Mart in some places does sell a 2-bulb T8 shop light for 10 dollars, which is usually what they want for those single bulb ones like you have. If you could get a couple of those and put them vertical in there you'd be set for such a small space.
 
MagicCannabus said:
My advice wasn't meant to be condescending at all, but if you choose to take it that way, so be it. I am just not here to pull punches and pretend like I don't think what I am thinking. Many may have worried about hurting your feelings. I may have done that, but you should understand that I've been doing this for a long time and have had a lot of failures of my own. My own starting grow was pathetic, and you're on a much better track than I was. I just know that the pain my words may inflict is nothing compared to the pain of dead plants. That is what I mean about approaching this grow with the right sort of humility. I still ask people for advice about things and I've been doing this for 6 years now. I'm no better than you, you're no better than me. I was never saying anything of the sort.

Anyway, the 17W T8 fluoros are great, but you need a lot of them. Wal-Mart in some places does sell a 2-bulb T8 shop light for 10 dollars, which is usually what they want for those single bulb ones like you have. If you could get a couple of those and put them vertical in there you'd be set for such a small space.
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thanks for clarifying :) I went to walmart to get the vertical fluorescent lights that I have, and yes, they were around $10 a piece. I wish I saw ones that had two T8 bulbs in the fixture, but they weren't there. And thanks for tryin to save me the heartache of a dying plant, that would suck! haha, but this is just a seed I had around. I wasn't gonna waste the good seeds I have on my first grow. I have 10 feminized Strawberry Cough seeds and 5 Master Kush mixed from Holland ready to go, but I think i'm gonna hold off on growing those till this summer when I have a bigger, safer area to grow in. This plant is kinda my learning plant, and if it turns out it's female and I get some bud from it, great. If it's a male, w/e, at least I know how to grow now. Again, thanks for all the advice guys! I really appreciate it! I love how in these forums everyone seems really cool, even when there's a misunderstanding :rollit:
 
UntamedFox said:
This plant is kinda my learning plant, and if it turns out it's female and I get some bud from it, great. If it's a male, w/e, at least I know how to grow now.
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That's the best mindset to have. The best piece of advice i can give you is to keep your mouth shut about it. Loose lips sink ships, ya know. If you get it growing good and fast and full, you'll want to tell somebody and show off. Please dont.
That's it.:welcome:
 
CharlieMopps said:
That's the best mindset to have. The best piece of advice i can give you is to keep your mouth shut about it. Loose lips sink ships, ya know. If you get it growing good and fast and full, you'll want to tell somebody and show off. Please dont.
That's it.:welcome:
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man, I know what you're saying. It's so hard not to tell anyone, but I can't. It's simply too dangerous. I can't wait for some law reform to happen, but until then... we're all just underground. Thanks for the warning, I know what you're saying. I haven't told anyone in the past week that I have been growing, besides my friends that don't live near me, and obviously y'all online. :grinjoint:

So anyways, thanks for all the advice guys and gals :D I'll let y'all know how my plant is doing and if any more issues come up. I'm hoping that I don't need much help on nutrients and such, just want the plant to grow well. I have heard that you can shift from vegetative to bloom at any point past when sex is shown, it's just best to do it when the plant is at it biggest. I need to harvest before May 1, so that's really not an option. not to mention that i have constrictions of space! haha, can anyone tell me if this is true or false?
 
Good luck with the grow man. Sorry if I came off obnoxious. I was half asleep both times I came to this thread lol

I do think you're on the right track though. My main problem starting was that I was over-ambitious. I was running like 10 plants in a 2x5 space with only about 250W of CFLs. It was really sad. Then I never flipped them to 12/12 because they got all stretchy and freaky. Now I'm putting that much into one square foot for my flowering chamber. With fluorescents, especially tubes, you really can far exceed the watts per square foot rules because the light from them is so much less intense.

Interestingly enough, some of the Phototron users out there who have had results have said again and again that even their leaf matter becomes more potent with all that diffuse lighting. I suggest you do some research on the Phototron, and especially the work of the user "RageMonkey". He pulled over a wet pound out of his, it was really wicked. That would be roughly a quarter pound out of a single plant growing in no more than a couple square feet of floor space.

Anyway if you ever do any travel, look at the Walmart stores where you go. Some of them may have the two-bulb mini shop light. The distance between the bulbs on it is not ideal for growing, and you could pack more of those single-bulb fixtures in there, but it's a lot cheaper. Maybe you can find a 24" shop light or strip light somewhere local for not a lot of money. A hardware store might have such a thing, and maybe even one with an electronic ballast. Electronic ballasts are a must! They produce a lot less heat. Few if any T8 lamps will run on a magnetic ballast though, and almost nobody produces commercial fixtures running magnetic ballasts(except for extreme weather cold start fixtures). Those single fixtures that you have also have an e-ballast but they are not as efficient as one that runs multiple bulbs.
 
Photo_91.jpg


DAMN! I think i killed my damn plant! I lowered the little blue lamp so that it was about 2" away from the leaves and left it for maybe 45 min, came back to check and saw that! I think i burned all the leaves :( is this thing dead? or will it be stunted? what should i do?? I just started germinating 2 more seeds in case I do need to start over... damn, at least i'm making these rookie mistakes on bagweed! It goes without saying that the little blue light is gone! damnit, i just wanted to give it the most light!
 
start over. im about to because of harvest, so let us know what your going to use this next time around and before anything happens plan out your area, find space for everything.. that includes meteres sockets lights fans etc.. start with somthing like 3-4 cfls (soft white? correct me if im wrong) of moderate wattage over the seedling, ive had great experience getting seedlings started this way. a grow journal would be whats next for you in my opinion. since its step by step we can help you alot more.
 
If you screwed up its good you did it in the first week and can start again. I never let the lights get closer than 5-6 inches. If you want to harvest on may 1st, count backwards 65-70 days. Thats the day you should switch from 18/6 to 12/12.
 
CharlieMopps said:
If you screwed up its good you did it in the first week and can start again. I never let the lights get closer than 5-6 inches. If you want to harvest on may 1st, count backwards 65-70 days. Thats the day you should switch from 18/6 to 12/12.
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sweet, ok. I'm gonna start a grow journal on here then. I might grow some of the Mazar x Afgan. I started one of the seeds germinating earlier today. That means that this will be vegetative until the end of february. how much plant do you think i can get in 4.5 weeks? I don't want to grow my feminized strawberry cough yet, though. I wanna save that for the summer when I have a great grow closet at a place that is a bit larger than where I am. I guess I gotta get another lamp fixture. It sucks to have to start over, but I guess at least I F*cked up early... :( Quick qestion, what temp should the water be in the paper towel while i'm germinating? Also, look for me over in the journal section!!
 
Really might want to double-check the soil mix. It looks like there's some chance it burned up, or maybe just dried up. Those halogens get super hot and may have scorched it. Not a biggie though like you said it can be restarted. I'm not sure that one was actually dead, and it probably could have been saved, but starting new seeds is a good backup anyway.

Can you get coco coir anywhere near where you live? Lot of growers I have respect for use it and swear by it. I can't find any around here. Might be worth looking into.
 
what is coco coir?? and i'm sure it's the light i put about 1-2" away from the leaves cuz i put it there while everything was great, then 45 min later when i came back, it was burnt up. I'm starting a new journal in the journal section under Mazar x Afgan in the title.
 
Coco coir is made from the husks of coconuts. It's a substrate like peat moss, only way better. Basically it's had as hell to drown a plant in it. It does require a bit different thinking than soil, but it's good stuff.
 
cool, i'll keep that in mind. I'm not really looking for professional quality my first time round, just trying to get the basics down so that I can have a feel for it.
 
Photo_101.jpg

so here's the plant about 24 hours after i think i killed it. the stem still seems good, but the leaves are gone. I can't tell if the little leaves from the stem top are growing or not. if so, they have brown tips... I can't plant the seeds i'm germinating till sunday or so, when they are ready. I'll keep it in soil, just to see what happens, but it seems like the plant might be weakened to say the least. i don't even know if it's male or female, so here's my question: should I wait until i plant the new seeds, or jump the gun and get this plant out of the pot?
 
You can try transplanting it. I would seriously look into a really simple, and really gentle soil for seedlings if you can find any. Do you have a Home Depot near you? They sell Pro-Mix for containers, as well as dolomite lime, perlite, etc.. Also it turns out Petco sells bricks of coir as reptile bedding. Just don't use it before asking lots of questions around here as it is a considerably different medium than regular soil.

With as blurry as the photo is(suckers are hard to photograph aren't they?!), I can't really tell what the problem is. I think I see some moisture in a circle around the seedling so I will assume you did not under-water them. That suggests to me that either the mix is too hot with fertilizer, and/or the pH is out of whack.

If you really want to make sure get some dolomite lime and then take a pot of this soil and put it in the tub and run about 5 the volume of the pot worth of fresh water through it. Filtered is better, but tap water usually works fine. Once you've flushed the soil fully, THEN add the dolomite in the recommended amounts(read around here and ask on that one, it may vary depending on your other medium components). Then flush the soil one more time with an amount equal to your mix in volume. This is your best bet for a really basic, clean soil for seedlings. Double-check the pH at that point. If you can't afford a meter, just use strips to test the run-off. It's not perfect but it helps a lot.
 
remember, the leaves were physically burnt, with a lamp. the pH and fertilizer levels are fine: 6.5 and no fertilizer other than in soil. I have pH readers and nutrient level readers. the soil is really soft as it is. I'm just wondering if a seedling like that can recover from having it's leaves burned by a lamp?? or because I burnt the leaves pretty bad, the plant will not continue to grow. as of now, i see no real growth between yesterday and today.
 
Stress can take a while to recover. Have backups of backups. Might as well start some seeds now. That way you may end up with too many plants, but you just ruthlessly trim the ones you aren't going to use and trim their roots to fit them in tiny containers like mom plants. Then when you need them you give them room to grow and you already have a bushy little monster.

I sorta forgot about the lamp. I'm really spacey on this good brick we found. Worst I ever had was a clone that died back due to pH issues till it only had one leaf left on it that was 3mm long. After several weeks she was trained back into a spiraling little momma plant full of pretty little leaves. That was an exceptionally durable strain though. It's always sad to see a seedling die, but if it doesn't make it, just remember that for every one seed planted, millions are basically aborted. So it sprouted a bit and didn't make it. That's nature really. Most seeds in the wild never survive. If you succeed one time out of 20, you're still beating nature. A mature cannabis plant can drop like 50-100K seeds. Of those 50-100 might actually grow into something, and half are likely male. I keep these things in mind when the growing gets hard.
 
yea, i got three seeds germinating right now, i think it's been around 48 hours... they're doing well, all have roots coming from the seed. I'm gonna wait another 24-48 hours before I plant them in soil. I got a whole journal started on it, go and look it up! it's got a lightbulb net to the topic in the "journals in progress" section. I cannibalized the dead plant and put it into fresh soil as a sort of compost idea. I figured, why let it go to waste?! so come and check out my journal! it's Afgan x Mazar
 

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