First time grower with a few questions

Beginner
#1

Hello everyone, I’m planning my first grow. My setup will be in my bedroom using:
Spider farm 3x3x6 grow tent.
Growstar MN-W3000 led grow light 220 wattts
Ipower 6" 350CFM inline fan with air carbon filter
Ipower 6" 240 CFM Booster Fan for intake
2 small fans. 1 on ground and the clipped on just below light level
Portable ac that I will try to rig to push cool air tent.
Fox farm ocean forest soil
Fox farm happy frog soil
Harris premium perlite
I have 2 different nutrients. Gold leaf liquid fertilizer & TPS complete nutrients. I’m going to try the gold leaf first with some botanical cal-mag and botanical hydroelectric bloom for flowering.
I have 3 different size fabric pots 1, 2, & 3 gallons. Not sure which one I will be using as yet.
And lastly I have seeds from homegrown:
Deelite auto flower, which I think I will be trying first.
Killer feminized seeds
Girl scout cookies auto flower

So with all that what else am I missing. Do I need c02?
Can I store tap water and use it to water my plants. How long can I store my seeds… What would be a good pot size to start with, I think I will start with 2 plants to see how it goes. Any input is very valuable to me and would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

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#2

Welcome Courtney @Mackerel!

It sounds like you have done your homework and have it pretty well thought out! I think you’ll do well.

Using CO2 is a different animal and it’s not necessary for good results. It’s really not worth it unless you’re able to drive the plant faster with the light and right environmental conditions.

You also need to create (for efficiency) a “closed loop” in terms of the air in your environment. If you have an exhaust + intake ( :+1:) it might sweep away the supplemental CO2. But I’m a fan of having the intake, in my opinion that’s going to boost your CO2 enough right there.

If you find you’re needing the AC, especially this time of year, maybe use that intake to pull air from outside. Have the fan come on at the same schedule as the light.

I use tap water, but I live near the Great Lakes and it’s pretty good. I fill a 5 gallon bucket a day ahead of time and use an aquarium pump with air stones to get the chlorine out and add in some dissolved oxygen.

But I grow organically in “living soil”. I don’t use bottled nutes. Some of those might expect you to be using distilled or RO water - you should check to make sure.

Seeds will keep longer if they’re sealed airtight in the fridge.

I find it a bit more difficult to transplant out of a fabric pot. And for Autos, most people don’t like to transplant them at all. I’d go with 3 gallon or larger for all, but you could probably get by with the smaller ones if you’re bottle feeding.

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#3

Hey there currdogg420, thanks for the input. I’m really anxious to get things going, just waiting on a few more items from my list to arrive. OK so I will skip on that co2 for now, don’t want to complicate things lol. So for the (efficiency) I should put the intake fan at the bottom and the exhaust fan with carbon filter at the top, as far as the ac I’m in the sunshine state so it doesn’t get really cold or not for long so it might come in handy. The gold leaf nutrients is supposed to be an all in one instead of the a+b solutions, and is supposed to be safe to use with tap water. I saw some good reviews on it so I said let me try it out. Once I have my tent set up I will post some pics to get some feedback before I start the growing process. Oh and I see some people using this thing called real growers recharge. Should I be concerned about it. Just trying to make sure I have all the right essentials before I plant.

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#4

Regarding the recharge, if you were doing a “living soil” type grow, you could use that on your second grow to replenish some of the nutrients and microbiology that got used up in the previous grow in that soil.

The Fox Farm soil should have enough fertilizer in it for about a month before you’ll start needing the nutes.

I lived in Florida for a summer. When I was there, they had some water advisory and you couldn’t drink the tap water. If you don’t drink your tap water I would not advise using it on your plant.

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#5

I hear you on the AC. I used a 30ft four inch dryer duct to run from the output (upper vent) on one side of my window AC, and the other end is low inside my tent. The idea being displace the old air and push it up to the outlet filter. I attached the duct to the ac by simply cutting one turn of the wire spring that forms the dryer duct, and use it as a hanger to hook the hose on the AC. The hose literally runs under my bed; along the wall, and into the tent.
Back that up with a small dehumidifier right in the tent, and you’ll have a fair ability to draw off excess humidity.

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#6

Thanks again for the input. So as far as the humidifier can I get something small, and inexpensive or do I need something big. Do you have any recommendations. I was looking on Amazon. Where will I put it though. Up high on the floor or in the middle of the tent.

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#7

Though there are fancier models, a little twenty dollar unit meant to sit on a shelf works fine.

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#8

I forgot to mention: especially in your climate, schedule your lights to come on at night. Off during the day. It will make the heat load more manageable and you might even pay less for the electricity. Plus if you’re busy working for other people during the day it’s just more convenient as well.

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#9

I keep thinking of more things probably cause I’m bored. I apologize if it’s annoying but hopefully it’s helpful.

All homes in FL have central air right? I think that was in the building codes there. With an intake and exhaust, you’ll get nice air exchange and a supplemental window AC in the bedroom ought to be able to keep you in the right temperature range.

I might wait-and-see what’s needed as far as humidity until I could test the setup. With the lights on and the doors closed on the tent you can probably expect the temp to be 10 deg higher than the room and 10% lower RH.

If you can’t get get the temp below mid-80’s or RH below 50 that’s when you might want to think about the CO2. Unless you sleep in that bedroom.

#10

Hey man I appreciate every input given. It can never be annoying lol. I grateful that someone took the time to help me out. So I had a 2x2x4 tent that I was originally going to use. I had a growstar 300w led light and a 4" intake fan that was using as an exhaust fan and a small fan at the bottom to pull in air. After doing some more research I decided not to go with that setup as it was small and I don’t think it would make sense to me, so I went with the setup I have now. But with he first set up, I did some test runs and when the light is on I would get high 70’s to low to mid 80’s. And humidity would fluctuate up and down, sometimes as low as mid 30’s up to in the low 60’s. I tried putting a bucket of water in the tent and somehow that kinda kept the humidity somewhat consistent. I’m waiting on my exhaust fan with the carbon filter now so I can finish setting up this tent and run some tests to see how temp and humidity does in this tent. I will get a humidifier if I have to but want a small one as to not take away too much space. So anxiously waiting. Oh and I do sleep in the room with the tent.

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#11

Yes I did think of that. I’m planning to run my lights from either 6pm to 12pm or 4pm to 12 pm depending on the light schedule I will use. 18/6 or 20/4. Which do you think is better. What are the benefits of running a longer light schedule. Sorry if I’m asking too much lol.

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#12

Running for more hours increases the total quantity of light taken in by the plant per day, and that has a direct effect on growth. They do naturally want some time to rest though.

20/4 is probably the schedule I’d want for autos. For photoperiod plants I like to run 18/6, because when I switch to 12/12 (and turn the light up to full blast) I want the plant to receive at least as much quantity of light per day as it had while in veg.

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#13

That’s the way I am @CurrDogg420 tell someone something then after post i start thinking of all kinds of stuff

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#14

Lol Reed. This is, after all, a weed forum. Couch lock and meandering minds a specialty. :rofl:

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#15

Good day all, just here trying to finish setting up my tent. I will try to post a picture when I’m done…

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#16

Unless you want to wake up dead please Do not run co2 in a tent if you or animals sleep in the same room just starting out you are way better off not messing with it it also appears you do not have enough lights to take advantage of it…co2 blasts the humidity sky high in my 4x8 flowering room a 1200sq.ft size dehumidifier stays on top of it barely I noticed more hermi issues when I use co2 with autos… but when you have all your conditions met co2 makes them grow inches a day

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#17

Thanks jimbo for the advise. But are my lights sufficient for my whole grow.

#18

I hadn’t heard of that one before but it looks like a good choice and a great value.

There’s a pretty cool light calculator here - you input the light specs and it can give you an estimated coverage area and yield. You can enter the price too and see how it compares against other lights.

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#19

I checked it out wow so many numbers lol. They didn’t have my specific brand but I inputted some info and I might be ok with this light.

#20

Oh I have a silly question. How do you actually count the days. Like for germination is day 1 the day you put the seeds in the napkin to soak. For seedling stage is day 1 the day you transplanted or the day that it come out of the soil. When does the veg state start and is the first day of flowering when you first see the little white hairs.