Closet Tent LED Confidential

Heyo, long time lurker here. With all this LED crazy hype I decided to give them a try so I found Apollos on amazon and went all in with a 1200w model that runs around half that in actual power used and added some 4ft T5H0s for sidelight. I am hanging that sucker like 40 inches from plants but they are still growing dense. I also had some lettuce basil and tomatoes in the side pots as experiment with light but they drying out too quickly so gonna take em out. I've been vegging for a month now
At this moment I haven't trimmed at all and am pretty surprised the 1200w LED is doing so well, I started them from seed and haven't moved the light closer. This is the album from seed to last week http://imgur.com/a/nQTuL

Here is a pic of them now, they are completely virgin and I haven't topped/fimmed/trimmed.
Love advice and feel free to comment!

Better pic of them sitting healthy, I am torn between setting up a perpetual grow or just flowering them but preflowers haven't shown yet so until I find out if I have any males just vegg them hard. I'm not worried about height because the tent is 83 inches tall and have tons of vertical room

Looking good for a month in! So you have the LED 40" up... sounds about right for that kind of wattage, if anything it's maybe on the close side for veg... but it's fan cooled, and LEDs, even at such high wattages, are tough to scorch plants with.

Do you know how many inches tall your babies are? Your pics make me wish I'd started my first and current grow off with higher watts... got a 300w LED now and I want to build a COB to augment for flowering... but enough about me xD

How many plants do you have currently on that setup? Should be enough light for 10 or so in flower. Do you plan to do anythimg different for flower, like swap augmentory lights or something? Does your Apollo 1200w come equipped with a veg switch?

Looking good so far... keep doing what you're doing!

Thanks stoned_chess I appreciate your feedback and checked out your journal. You have some great looking babies even if they are regs, I like using cds as reflectors got a kick out of that. The two taller plants you have looking real nice.
I currently have 4 plants that I started from seed at the same time, they are about 8 to 12 inches. its funny that I have two runts and one big one. I will post some new pictures later today. I bought a pack of 12 seeds so have 8 more seeds so was thinking of seeing how this Apollo 1200w flowers, I've heard some pretty bad things about leds and flowering but I heard the same about vegging and that is doing great so figure it is worth it for science to see how it performs. The Apollo 1200w doesn't have a veg switch, not even a power button. I'm also using a 2'x2.5'x83" tent so if I was to buy a HPS light to flower it would probably be a 600w as a 1000w hps might be too much heat, but I do have a 4 inch ventech fan/carbon filter it. I will post some photos of that setup too. Originally it was staying warm in my room from the 1200w led but now the weather is getting cooler my room is on the cold side at night even with the lights on, but I have all my windows open. So yeah I'm torn between buying a hps and trying to flower with led, or getting a mini tent and taking clones and when they root flower them.

LEDs should work for flowering as long as you have enough red/warm spectrum in it, which you probably do, but getting an augmentory light would probably not be a bad idea. LEDs definitely work better/cooler/twice as efficiently as HPS and MH with more aptitude toward full-spectrum because of the simplicity to create basically any frequency imaginable.

Better yet than LED in just about every way is COB, or so I've been told by a reputable member of this site, Tim Fox, who has built his own COB boards that grow circles around anything else in the price range of what they cost to build. Below is a chart comparing full spectrum distribution between a Retro White (HPS color mimic) COB and an actual High Pressure Sodium light, respectively. There just isn't any real comparison between the old technology and the new. Also, COB is heatsink-cooled, so the unit stays cooler than standard LEDs, allowing higher wattage to be run through them without burning them out. I don't want to flower with a hot light and bake half the THC off my buds before I even get to smoke it! ^_°

I've been thinking about going with a DIY COB light for a super mini flower tent and having 9 x 100w COBs for a 1'x1' flowering tent (for a perpetual grow system) but that would require some time finding the perfect driver and power supply. If I was to make a COB for flowering in my current grow tent it would probably be maybe 15 - 20 x 100w COB so would be 1500w-2000w but of course they say to run the 100w chips with a 80w driver to keep them lasting longer. I have a background with electrical so it isnt impossible but considering most of the parts come from china I would want to make sure I get exactly what I need in one order. I will try to see if I can make that happening because that full spectrum is mighty enticing. If anyone has recommendations for power supplies or COB drivers would love to hear them, I want a elegant solution even if the cost is more.
Here are some updated pics, vegging along nicely, also a pic of the amount of height to LED light

a few days ago I fimmed all four plants. Decided I'm going to flower all of them this time around and see how the Apollo light does. They are bushing out nicely and preflowers are growing in, too early to tell but I think all four are female, I know the biggest one is for sure. Im still a ways away from getting ready to flower want them to bush out more. I am trying to stress them as little as possible so I am tucking fan leaves below new growth. next time around I'm going to try one huge smart pot like 10 gal or something and go for one huge bush. I rotate them to encourage lower growth. Advice comments welcome!

Update! They are bouncing back from the fimming I did. As a experiment to see if the fan leaves were blocking light for lower growth I stripped one plant of all the fan leaves off the main stem that is the bottom left plant, I did it last night.

Subbed looking good.

Doing good!

Progress update!
So I came home two days ago and the biggest plant was wilted even thou I had just watered the night before. So I gave her a bit of water as the light schedule had a few hours left in the cycle. Once the lights turned off I waited a half hour, turned off all the lights in my room so I was in a completely dark environment. I donned my green LED grow head light and I pulled them all out of the tent and gave them each a gallon of water, in addition I trimmed lower fan leaves and also filled coco in the pots so that now the soil level is to the brim of the smart pots, also supplemented glacial rock dust. After doing some research on vapor pressure deficit I noticed my relative humidity was getting very low like 20% so I finally set my humidifer up at the intake of my tent, I just have to say wow I have been an idiot, humidity is super important! Since I have setup the humidifer I have noticed increased growth rate and leaves not drooping at all anymore. Now that they have been flushed and I have a more acceptable humidity (30-50%) The new growth is crazy! It also looks like when I trimmed the fan leaves of the plant in bottom left I accidently fimmed it a second time. Oh well! I also rotated the plant positions in the tent, except for the bottom left. Also I setup a water system so every hour a 130gph pump turns on for 20 seconds and pipes water to stem base, I am currently not adding nutrients to the reservoir, I might but want to make sure it isnt going to go stale or anything, I don't want to put a airstone in it because of the noise.

So glad I setup the humidifier, they are growing super fast now. Looks like I am going to FIM again, aiming for 8-16 main tops on each plant and give them time to get that side growth taller! This is one day difference between last picture. When I flushed all my nitrogen went along with it so adding that back in now.

Some new pics, excuse the dirty thumb. Humidifier really seems to let these plants process better, must be caused by my dry hot climate. They are nutrient deficient from the flush, I noticed purple on the stems and they have stretched a bit, the FIM is probably coming into to play with that but maybe that is from nutrient deficiency? anyways no rush to flower the seeds were pricey so I want to do them justice may have been feminized cause It looks like 4 females from 4 seeds, The strain is Crockett's Confidential
I am inspecting the lower left plant that I trimmed all the fan leaves off main stem.
These pretty ladies going back on full strength nutrients and B-52
Edit: maybe I trim will it like a christmas tree lol, it always been the runt of the litter but not by too much

I don't think Crocket makes fem seeds only regular seeds.

sky rocket said:

I don't think Crocket makes fem seeds only regular seeds.

Click to expand...

You are right, funny enough timing it looks like the two on the right have just produce pollen sacs. The two on the left have formed pistils, I was hoping they were just too small to tell yet but considering they are the biggest plants. I am a little disappointed in Crockett as 12 seeds were 80 dollars so if they aren't feminized that is a bit much but I was in a rush and they available locally. going to hold off judging til I see the smoke and how it compares to the LA conf I remember, next time around I am going to not be an idiot and get some OG Kush feminized and plant her in a 20 gal smart pot, save me watering time, I still have left over seeds some seeds, maybe I will start two in these males places
So now I am getting ready to chop the two on the right

Man $80 for 12 beans is good deal for regular beans because I can't get them locally like you can......

I guess I can take good from the situation, I had the opportunity to dig them out and see the root system and structure. All four plants pretty similar, aside from one of my females had all the fan leaves taken off main stem. Everything looked good with these two so my two females are just going to do better with more light. I moved my dwarf tomato plant into one of the 5 gal smart pots, and I planted two cherry tomato seeds in the other empty one. I have a tiny place so this was a major pain to process privately, going to let the fan leaves dry then crumble and flush. The stalks I will dry then just keep for morale. Anyways, more changes to come just to tired from this project, I may ditch one of the smart gals but the two back pots seem to grow the fastest so we will see. also playing with the idea of ditching the runt female and going with a 15-20gal smart pot for the bigger one. advice comments and questions welcome and appreciated!

Just a little update, I gave them an aggressive fan blade trimming and double feeding and because of that flush a while back but also because B-52 fertilizer smells delicious. It is funny because the branching structure is almost identical to the two males, all same seeds, I wonder if that is from growing in a tent or if that is a seed variation. The bush on the left is very tall with with long nodes, while the smaller one is less twiggy just like the two males I culled if you look at the picture of the males from previous post defoliated still in the smart pots you can see what I mean.

Hey all, a little update but also looking for some advice. So as you can see they are getting big, a week or so I go a bruised the main stems on purpose to keep growth from going to the tall spots, thats what the dark spots are on the stems but also one of the reason why the leaves are so dark (this was before a feeding) So I am preparing to do the flip and go 12/12, but one of the things is Advanced nutrients has all these chemicals such as Big Bud, Overdrive and I am wondering if they are worth it, money is a little tight at the moment but if I need to I can purchase one of those mini hobbyist packs just for Big Bud and Overdrive, maybe even Tarantula as I already have Voodoo juice and B52. I currently have Sensei Bloom Coco A+B but am just about to run out of Sensei Grow another reason why getting ready to flip. Does anyone know if Tarantula/Big Bud/Over Drive are worth the money? The reviews are all good so just want to see if I should get those before flowering. Anyways I am going to give them more time to heal from this brusing technique but pretty soon it should start exploding out the tops and thats why I think I might flower. So main questions are: Do you think overdrive/bigbud/tarantula are worth the money? Next question is: I was planning on running some pure water for 2-3 days before I begin the flip, think it should be a week or not even worry about doing this? Third questions, as far as timing the lights, I am doing 18/6 right now, should I gradually change it down to 16/8 -14/10 - 12/12 or no worries? Anything else you can think of that maybe I might have overlooked. The plants are dark on top because of the brusing and they are dry, that I'm not worried about, you can also see some white speckling on older leaves that I originally thought was nutrient spills but at this point I think they may just be from some result of smart pots / nutrients. thanks! also I have a bunch of bamboo/twine stakes ready for when weight starts becoming a concern Advice comments and questions welcome, more photos in next post

photos in these two posts were taken week and half or so, oldest to newest