Light schedule question.

This is a misunderstanding of how to quantify light. Daily Light Integral (DLI) is what matters. And, i t mostly doesn't matter if you provide 35-40 DLI over 12, 14, 16, 18 or 20 hours etc... The amount of energy applied per day to the leaves is what matters. Not hours of light. that is half the equation. How intense was that light? even running a weak light 24/0 may not provide enough. So, you need to guesstimate what DLI you are providing. It may be too much, or you may be able to push a bit more. It all depends. The trichome thing you mention is definitely bro-science. ignore it. it's unsophisticated and missing half the picture. While i recommend having "some' dark period, i don't know what the minimum for best resutls are.. 4-6 hours? In some contexts of low DLI from a weak light, i'd even recomend 24/0. Otherwise, you can use hours of light just as yo do a dimmer knob. If you want 10% more DLI, you can simply add 10% to hours of operation, all other factors remaining the same. Read the wiki on dli. Get the gist. Vivosun VS4000 - the amazon listing lies about efficacy, so they can't be trusted. with only 952 diodes and 400w there's no fucking way it.s 2.9umol/J. Don't even have to look it up it;s such a profound lie. Probably closer to 2.3-2.4umol/J range. So a guesstimate of 400 x 2.3 = 920 umol/s of PAR produced by that light. This 'lie' won't impact quality or yield. It just means you spennd a few more watts creating those umol/s of PAR. At this scale, it's maybea a dollar or 5 per month more? proportional to (2.8-2.3)/2.3 Divide that by area of coverage (tent size, unless you have lowered the light to focus on a smaller area) and you get "PPFD". Doesn't matter if you knwo what it means or not,lol. Can simply reference a DLI table with hours of operation and your PPFD to see your DLI. You'll spend 15-20% more per month than a more efficient light that produces the same 920umol/s of PAR ("PPE" or "PPF") Let's say it's a 4x4. That's roughly 1.5m^2. 920 / 1.5 = 613 PPFD 18 hours of operation and ~600 PPFD is 38.9 DLI ... if you have hung the light to properly cover a 4x4 area and run it 18 hours a day, that should be enough. Further tweaking required to find the 'maximum' you can give. this requires further trial and error but it is going to be very close to 'max.' Observe plant growth to further tweak how much light you give per day. If nodes are too tight, give a bit less. If nodes are too stretchy, give more. -- more power, more hours, doesn't matter. Make sure no bleaching occurs late in flower -- if it does, you needed a little less light. the faster the symptoms arise or the more profound they are, the greater the adjustment needed to fix it. If you give 38.9 DLI over 12 or 18h, it really wont make any difference to the yield. In fact, if you are in a cold environment, the added heat of increased intensity over 12h may even be beneficial. In a hot environemtn, you'd want to spread that DLI out as much as you can to reduce heat, so 18h providing 38.9 dli would be better. I say "38.9" but that's just the ballpark. 35-40DLI is likely your max given ambient CO2. Local variables will make your max different from my max DLI... you may be aboe to give a few ticks more or less. so this light is great for a 4x4 growing autoflowers. Don't try to grow photoperiods filling up entire tent. this won't have great results over 12 hours. 25.9 DLI is bare minimum. It'll flower and produce nugs but overall yield will suffer. In your context, autoflowers are definitely better (threw up in my mouth a little bit saying that) It'd be fine in 2/3rds the area of 16sq ft == 10.7sq ft. (sorry for switch from metric) or just under 1m^2 for a 12 hour schedule... since your tent walls aren't helping as much with a smaller area of focus, you don't use the light as efficiently.