CFL/Cabinet Grow/1 plant

Hello fellow enthusiasts, this here is my third CFL cabinet grow after one incomplete, and one round of failed clones. But I'm only $150 in and I learned a lot, so it's all worth it
I should add that I started this grow on a tight budget so I used some things that I already had on hand, such as soil, lamp sockets, etc.
In other words, Ghetto.

I actually started a journal of this grow, but it got kind of lonely so I figured I'd post it here and see if I can get some feedback.

I've got:

1 small pot of outdoor potting soil, that claims to be pH balanced, with some peat moss and perlite pre added, and an NPK of about 3-1-1
x4 42 watt 6500K CFLS that pump out about 2600 lumens each.
x2 PC fans for intake/out take
x1 small oscillating fan to keep the heat off her
x1 seed from the seed bank, and I can't remember the strain

I'll get this out of the way: I've only got a water-dye pH kit, which I've heard aren't very effective.
I've also got some miracle grow fertilizer, which I've also heard terrible things about.
The potting soil I used does seem to have about 15-20% bark.
But, lets stay positive.

This is the cab



This is the make shift intake
as seen here

This is the fan I'll use for exhaust, I haven't installed it yet.

Finally the plant.




I've had some slow growth, for the first week of her life I kept her in the window in mid august, and then decided to get my setup going again with 6500K lights.
The lights weren't on a proper schedule til I got my timer recently.

The shocker: this plant will be three weeks old on thursday!
I'm going to ride it out and see what happens.
Fun to watch either way

Any comments or criticism welcome.

I'll update when I install the exhaust fan and take some more pictures.

your going to want more space soon.

Right on, I can raise the lights another 5 inches, and I do plan to try some LST if it starts to pick up, however, there's a 4' section of the cabinet to the left that I planned to use for a flower chamber a little later on.

your switching to 2700k for flower right?

Absolutely.
They sell the 42 watt 2700k everywhere around here.
I haven't seen any higher watts in stores so far.

I've thought about about grabbing one of those 200w CFL's, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
seems I've got a while to go yet.

I haven't been able to install my exhaust fan for lack of the right tools.
I tried to get it done with my swiss army knife saw, but......

anyways, I had turned the fans off about 2 hours prior to the lights going off cause they were keeping me awake and I had to work early this morning, big mistake.

I woke up this morning to find my plant that had been under the lights for an hour this morning as well, so a total of 3 hours without the fans on.
I've moved the lights about an inch and a half further away and the fans are back on now.
new growth seems to look okay



This plant is 3 weeks old yesterday

I installed my CPU exhaust fan last night, which keeping the temperature much much cooler.
infact I'm almost worried it may be too cold at night for the 6 hours the lights are off.
does anybody else have that problem? if so whats a good way to promote warmth during lights out?

here are some pictures of the fan/new growth

exhaust fan mounted with tupperware lid and some foam
cab's getting a bit messy with wires
what I'm guessing is heat stress on the tips looks pretty bad
but new growth seems to be doing okay.

feed back appreciated

leave em on 24 dude,what about a desk fan? get air moving around in there i use a cpu type fan on my "nursery" (aka homebox)

spacebrain said:

leave em on 24 dude,what about a desk fan? get air moving around in there i use a cpu type fan on my "nursery" (aka homebox)

Click to expand...

I was pondering whether or not I should leave the lights on 24 hours, I had read that the dark period helps stimulate root growth, but seeing as how it's barely growing at all I'm willing to try 24 hours.
thanks for the suggestion!

Also, I do have a desk fan in there circulating air, and the two cpu fans are keeping a nice warm air flow through the cabinet, I can feel cool air being sucked into the intake and warm air being expelled via the exhaust, so it seems like it's workin'.
However, does anyone think the slow root growth could be due to not enough fresh air?

A couple more pics from yesterday, a bit of new growth but still pretty slow over all.
I'm assuming the seed I had was the runt of the litter, seeing as how I've had a pretty hard time with it up til now.
I've adjusted the pH and added a very small amount of nutes to see if it would help but I'm not seeing a positive or negative response at this point.
so, I'm planning my next grow which will be with a 600 watt HPS.

Anyway, here's the pics!

have you tryed Alaskan fish fertilizer ur plat looks kind of deprived and in my little experience if that were me spend 18 more buck get a 10 inch socket and reflector and a y from home depoet and hang it about 2 inch above have my light like your and growth was kind sluggish but when i got that reflector things started to pick up

Cool thanks for the info badblood.
I'll definitely look into that.
I've been seeing a lot of people using those Y socket splitters with CFL's,
definitely an investment I'm willing to make.