Day 28 - Full watering/feed to run-off 10%-20% at same strength as previous. (50% of maker recommended strength for coco use + cmx + root enhancer + kept extract organic additive)
Day 31 - Decided lower lights by around 30cm 120cm to about 90cm. After about 8 hours the plants all suddenty wilted. They stay wilted through the night cycle as well, so I raised the lights back to where they were and they have bounced back, so I won't suddenly drop the lights by as much. If I do lower them it will be incremental.
Day 32 - Bought a six fin 800w oil heater for the tent. Am going to place this under the oscillating fan and set it aiming to keep the tent around the 25-27c range. Hopefully this has the tent sorted for the rest of the grow. The humidity has been high lately due to the weather, so this might be about the only factor left to address, and I will look at getting a dehumidifier for the grow room if needed.
Day 33 - Full watering to run-off 10%-20% at same strength as previous. (50% of maker recommended strength for coco use + cmx + root enhancer + kept extract organic additive)
- Ordered humidity controller for extractor fan.
- Ordered Temperature controller for Heater
- Ordered IP Camera for remote monitoring
Tent is now running fully sealed and using passive inlet and carbon filtered extraction to roof space. Plants are around 20-40cm high and the lights are 85cm above the canopy on full 480w.
Day 33 - I have reduced the Light intensity from 480w to 420w. This seemed to really get a good response from the plants. I think as they've grown taller and the light intensity has quietly increased at the newly heightened canopy level the plants have been getting stressed.
Day 34 - I've reduced then light intensity from 420w to 280w. I am new to the quantum boards and the concept of "too much light" so working out how much intensity, how much distance and so forth for the different stages of plants growth. I have a gut feeling 280w at 80cm might be a touch under-powered but I'll give it a full light-cycle or two to judge leaf growth and colour and make a call on whether or not to increase it or leave it as is.
Day 35 - I found plants wilting during hthe night cycle without fan air circulation. So I've set the oscillating fan to run during night hours.
Day 35 - I've turned up the heater a touch to bring the tent temp to around 26c. Infrared gun shows leaf temps to be around 24-25c which ideally I want to get to 27-29c - I'll aim for this metric once the other environmental factors are sorted (ventilation seems sorted so mainly just dialing in the light intensity).
* I'm looking forward to setting up the heater on temperature controller, and putting the carbon filter ventilation on humidity control, and then mounting an IP camera in the tent. This should all be here in around 2 weeks. I'm looking forward to being able to view the temp/humidity and see the plants live without having to actually open the grow room.
* The infrared temp gun is proving invaluable in testing leaf, coco and pot temperatures around the tent, which is giving a great view of how the heat from the heater/fan arrangement is being distributed - it shows a less than 1-2c degree variance across the tent which is just great.
* Hopefully week 6 to come will be one with a lot less wilting incidents and the week that this tent achieves a somewhat final and stable environment optimised for plant growth and happiness. But so far every time I think I've got things perfected, another variable comes into play and I need to tweak something. Maybe by the end of this harvest I will have the whole process refined to a smoother less reactionary process.