should her leaves be praying, is this considered "drooping" or am I just fine and overthinking it all?

GG4 from ILGM.com germinated in a paper towel on less than 24hrs, planted on august 18th...broke soil 24 hrs after that. transferred to final 7 gallon fabric pots 5 days ago and they're growing really fast. still messing around trying to find the sweet spot for my light.
my question is are my leaves too saggy? theuly seem to stick straight out horizontally, but I wonder if they should be praying upward some?
using a newer spiderfarmer SE 3000 cranked to 100% and 25 inches above canopy. should I lower it more or raise it or leave everything how it is? thanks in advance

posture isnt looking bad, on a close look i would say the edges of the upper leaves are tacoing, so she see a bit too much light.
they will not need your light at 100% yet and prob do better if you crank it fown a bit.

I have a pretty similar light (HLG 320xl r-spec) and I’ve gotten great results at that stage with it turned down a bit…to maybe 80%…..and 26-28” above canopy.
I’ll keep it at 80% through veg and about a week or two into flower. Then I will gradually move it closer and ease up the intensity…..with the bulk of flowering at 18” and 95-100%. I’ll turn it back to 80% or so the last 2 weeks for finishing.
Your plants look good and should do great under that light.
I don’t do well with small plants in big pots, so I’ll go from a solo cup to 1gal to 5gal. I can never quite get the watering on point otherwise.
Good luck.

thanks for the quick reply, I will try that with my light. i usually transplant from a solo cup to 1 gal then to 7, first time skipping the 1 gal. this is my 6th grow, and the hardest part for me is reading the plant and determining where the light should be

cobshopgrow said:

posture isnt looking bad, on a close look i would say the edges of the upper leaves are tacoing, so she see a bit too much light.
they will not need your light at 100% yet and prob do better if you crank it fown a bit.

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thanks for replying. she's definitely tacoing, i thought that was heat stress... doing everything i can to keep it inder 90 deg inside the tent, and the light cranked isn't helping that. just turned down to 80% and left it at the same height. thanks again

heat is a factor too as VPD is, but ill bet they do great with 80% or less also.
not knowing your light nor your tentsize, so its a guess.

Like many other popular manufacturers, Spider Farmer puts usage instructions on the product page for their lights. Unless you have a specific reason to disregard their recommendations, it's probably a good idea to follow them.

You can dismount the driver on that light and move it to a new location. If heat is or could be an issue, you might want to get it out of the tent.

Delps8 said:

Like many other popular manufacturers, Spider Farmer puts usage instructions on the product page for their lights. Unless you have a specific reason to disregard their recommendations, it's probably a good idea to follow them.

You can dismount the driver on that light and move it to a new location. If heat is or could be an issue, you might want to get it out of the tent.

Click to expand...

the suggested manufacturer's height for the SE3000 from spiderfarmer for veg is only 8" and 6" for veg, that is way too close, I burned the crap out of my last grow (i got the light before i flipped my last grow) and started at 14", now Trying to find the sweet spot on my own. no idea why they would have the light height that far off? I do have the driver outside of the tent.

mhyg420 said:

the suggested manufacturer's height for the SE3000 from spiderfarmer for veg is only 8" and 6" for veg, that is way too close, I burned the crap out of my last grow (i got the light before i flipped my last grow) and started at 14", now Trying to find the sweet spot on my own. no idea why they would have the light height that far off? I do have the driver outside of the tent.

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No two ways about it — 6 - 8" at 100% = extra crispy. That's shitty advice and sorry to hear about your plants.

I just checked their web site and, much to my surprise, I could not find info on hang height. Googled for a manual and no luck. But there is discussion about it on another cannabis forum. Spider really needs to up their game on this. It's too bad because the light itself is nice. I checked out the PPFD map and this light would be absolutely primo in a 2' x 2' tent.

I ended up running my bar light at 14", too, and changed PPFD via the dimmer.

Good on you for moving the driver - even if it's not cranked up, it's one less thing to have to mess with.

If you haven't dialed in your light, a lux meter will work pretty well to get you in the ballpark. I bought an Apogee when I started growing and thought it was sort of hinky to use a light meter instead of a PAR meter. I gather up some info from a couple of different light manufacturers and put together the info below.

My flower light is the Growcraft X3 full cycle light which is why I use that as a baseline. If I were to use a light meter and multiply the reading by 0.016, the values would be within 1% of the values on the Apogee. The X3 is a flower light so it's red-heavy so it's different than most light but the "QB" lights are HLG's which are much closer to a white LED.

Per the table, you could get really close to those values by matching the spectrum of your light against a light in the list. It's not going to be 100% accurate but, when it comes to PPFD, all we need to do is get in the ballpark and then it's up to the grower to "adjust fire" from there.

Food for thought.

thanks for the information. greatly appreciate it. the only place i could find the hanging height is inside the pamphlet that came with the light, here's a pic... i noticed it says 60-90% power for veg and 4" diff in height depending on tent temp over/under 82 deg F... that is still twice as close as it needs to be judging by my plants. currently have it at 26" on 80% and they seem to love it

Re. SF's recommendations - even 40% power at either 8 or 12" is too much light. The PPFD map shows ≈ 1200µmols at 100% so that would be ≈ 500µmols. You're well into veg territory at that level. I wonder why they recommend that much light?

"currently have it at 26" on 80% and they seem to love it" - and that's what really counts!

absolute, if they love it they love it.

for a rule of thumb ppfd.
multiply your wall watts with efficacy ppfd rating and divide it by the tent area.
lets say 200w x 2.7ppfd divided by 1.44 squaremeter (a 4x4) 375ppfd average.
doesnt take wall loses or any much else in to account, so its very rough.
but lux meter ppfd conversions are rough too, theres a wide spread between the manufactorers and quite some factors out there, not to mention the 660nm red isnt well covered at all by them.

cobshopgrow said:

absolute, if they love it they love it.

for a rule of thumb ppfd.
multiply your wall watts with efficacy ppfd rating and divide it by the tent area.
lets say 200w x 2.7ppfd divided by 1.44 squaremeter (a 4x4) 375ppfd average.
doesnt take wall loses or any much else in to account, so its very rough.
but lux meter ppfd conversions are rough too, theres a wide spread between the manufactorers and quite some factors out there, not to mention the 660nm red isnt well covered at all by them.

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Interesting approach. If that will get you in the ballpark, that's great. Once a grower gets to a starting point, it's up to them to watch the plants and adjust PPFD, as needed.

I use a Apogee and I record my light settings. There are times when I've wanted to reduce the light levels so I check my grow journal and reduce the wattage because it's faster to do that than it is to get the Apogee out of the case, unwind the cord, take the reading, and then pack it back in the case.

really just ballpark.
if you want verify, would be keen to know your result.
do use a spectromaster c7000 for ppfd myself, use it in a similar fashion as you.
its of curse a nice to know the "real" ppfd.

mhyg420 said:

GG4 from ILGM.com germinated in a paper towel on less than 24hrs, planted on august 18th...broke soil 24 hrs after that. transferred to final 7 gallon fabric pots 5 days ago and they're growing really fast. still messing around trying to find the sweet spot for my light.
my question is are my leaves too saggy? theuly seem to stick straight out horizontally, but I wonder if they should be praying upward some?
using a newer spiderfarmer SE 3000 cranked to 100% and 25 inches above canopy. should I lower it more or raise it or leave everything how it is? thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Water the whole pot next time. And at least download a free LUX app for your phone to get an estimate of light intensity. But dry soil and strong lights is like not giving water to a marathon runner,