Three tents. veg tent is LEC 315 and is 6’8" tall. LEC 630 flower tent 6’8" tall. QB 550r is second flower tent and is 9 ft tall. exhaust fans in both flower tents. 16 to 18 inch fans in all three tents for air flow. humidifier in veg tent to keep humidity up. solo cups for seedling stage, 3 gallon cloth pots for all plants. using organic soil and buddha grow and bloom for nutes. using hydroguard, regen a root, fish sh!t, extreme serene, and potassium silicate for amendments. will only use potassium silicate when not feeding nutes.
i am hoping to have a better flowering stage in this grow. i gained knowledge but flowering stage is still not optimum.
How many grows do you have on bulbs? The bulbs will last long time if turned on and left on, but heating and cooling cycles of firing daily can drop their output pretty quickly. If you have a pretty healthy grow and just doesn’t produce i would take a look at bulb replacement.
@beachglass your are very welcome to my journal bud, i have a black thumb but am able to get some out each grow. hopefully this will be the grow that i’m able to finally get thru the flower stage in good order.
@dbrn32 thanks for the heads up! yes, i have thought about replacing the LEC bulbs, especially the 315 as i run 6/2 all the way thru for seedling and veg stage. the QB should be fine as it has only been two grows for that one. i will probably run this grow with what i have installed and am a little short on funds right now. that could change if i quit smoking cigs lol which the VA doc has been after me for to do for 5 years.
just a heads up, looked it up and they have 24000 hours life divided by 18 hrs a day that comes to a little under 4 years a little under 6 years for 12 hrs a day for flower tent, which i’m glad cause there are two in the 630
24,000 hours
These tubes are more durable than MH and HPS grow lights, and thus they last significantly longer. CMH and LEC bulbs can last over 24,000 hours, which is over twice as long as the 10,000 hour average life span of MH and HPS bulbs!
I habe worked around mh, hps, and cmh bulbs nearly my entire adult life. The material you are pulling is absolute best case scenario and probably in continuous use. They are more durable than hps bulbs, but not by a lot. Most serious hps growers will change their bulbs after 1-2 flowering runs. Cmh will give you little more use, but if you’re expecting to use them for 3 years of complete growing then i would also expect to see lower returns.
If you go and look around at serious growers that have been using them for a long time I expect you to see that they’re changing bulbs every 1-2 years.
thanks for the headsup, gotta go by anecdotal experience. like i said, i was gonna swap the veg tent 315 out net grow, because that is the one i’m banging on. i’ve had very good results from my veg tent the last 6 grows, but this last veg stage or two did look a little light
I live in a world where sometimes money is tight, so i get when the situation arises that you’re going to run what you brought. I just wanted to point out that a significant amount of time on these bulbs should lead to a reduction in expectations.
