Can I use my 400 HPS right from day 1??

So I have lurked on here for months and slowly put together a Bubbleponics system in my crawl space. My question is can I use my 400 hps as soon as the seeds are put in the rockwool cubes or do I have to ease them in to the bigger light. Thanks.....Here are a couple pics of my set up.

Ok so I have the seeds in the rockwool and the the 400 is on, Temps are around 78 and humidity hovers around 50%.......Is that light going to harm them when they are this young?

you can use the HPS but they will veg better under MH or HO flouro's....
keep an eye on the heat

Keep them in the dark until you see first set of leaves.

i use cfl's for veg, and a 400 hps for flower. works for me.

Well I guess they like the 400.....only 24 hours after they were put into the rockwool all 6 are sprouted and the other 3 have poked up above the rockwool. Wow they really are starting nicely. I germintated 9 seeds hoping that 6 would sprout to fill the res and all 9 took.

very nice man. the heat must have helped you out or you had a good batch of seed for all of them to germ. are you going to do a journal? if so i'd follow to see how they end up veggin out an the male female ratio...

OK day 6 and the sprouts look very good, a couple of them seem to have the leaves curled down a bit......not sure if I should be concerned with that. The 400 is 7 inches abouve them and the temps are hovering around 78 - 80 degress. My biggest concern is the low Humidity.....20-30 % any thoughts on that??Think it is time for a 1/4 dose of nutes? I covered the top with mylar to reduce the amount of light getting in the res. The roots are now just touching the deep water.
Any thoughts would be great!

Looking good, you might take a trip to wall marts and pick up a cheap cool mist humidifier, they only cost about 25 bucks but will raise your humidity to at least 50 % the cool mist type doesn't have a heater and will also help with keeping the temp down..I also need to cover my tank top as well I thought I read where you should use white so it doesn't reflect to much on the new plants..

meadowline said:

OK day 6 and the sprouts look very good, a couple of them seem to have the leaves curled down a bit......not sure if I should be concerned with that. The 400 is 7 inches abouve them and the temps are hovering around 78 - 80 degress. My biggest concern is the low Humidity.....20-30 % any thoughts on that??Think it is time for a 1/4 dose of nutes? I covered the top with mylar to reduce the amount of light getting in the res. The roots are now just touching the deep water.
Any thoughts would be great!

Click to expand...

I had some experience w/ this.. only w/ my 250 watt hps... I put 6 day old sprouts under the 250 watt HPS and they really took off.. I think they need a week under just flouresents or CFL's before they are put under the HPS though...

You need to keep the light 12-18 inches away, especially considering your temps are pushing 80 degrees.. The little babies will get scorched, atleast IMO... I killed a couple sprouts (3 days old), b/c I put them under the HPS and they were about 8 inches away.. Their stem started shrinking in thickness until eventually they fell over one night.. The one that did survive, i put it under some flouresents and it didn't grow for 3 weeks until i finally pitched it...

You can do it, although i would advise atleast a week under CFL's and/or flouresents before using the HPS... 2 weeks before using the HPS would probably be even better..

Thanks for replies....Room Temp is holding steady at 80, res temp is 71, all the roots are now deep into the water. I am going to go and check out those humidifiers. I wonder if my light is to close? One of the plants has some yellow spots on the ends of the leaves....any ideas as to why? The leaves are kinda curled under......to many nutes? Appreciate all input!!

Overfed plants have the leaf tips curl downward or curl under. Hungry plants have their leaves curl up and turn brown.

I did a res change and added 1/2 strength nutes yesterday. I also have started to mist the plants every chance I get with some of the water from the res when I changed it. Not sure if that is what made the difference but they have perked right up and look a lot healthier. I have a plant in a 5 gal bucket with only a 26 watt CFL over it, and it is growing at the same rate as the plants under the 400. Think next time I will look at CFL lights for veg and just use the other light for flower.

Couple Pics.

So my power was off today for about 6 hours.....no lights no water pump and no air pump running.....How bad of a shock is this going to be to my plants??

Meadow,

You will be alright. As long as you are back up and running. Those leaves may be burning from intense light coming from the reflective material you are using on the container. Growers used to use aluminum foil years ago thinking that helped with light reflection, but that situation was proven to give off "spots" of light instead of even light distribution. Believe it or not paper plates, as many will agree here, work great for keeping algae out, covering the reservoir, and reflecting softer and light back to the plants. Hope this helps. Grow little babies grow!!

Thanks Longhorn, I never got a chance to remove the mylar from the top of the res. This is day 24 of veg and things appear to be going ok. I had some MAJOR odour issues and built a DIY carbon filter from a 5 gallon bucket, some small plywood and a window screen. Has cured the problem....and I owe major props to the several DIY threads on here! I am hoping that I get 3 out of the six that are female.....So to my question, How much worse will the smell get once the start to flower?