Spimps NLxBB Auto Micro CFL's 2013

[dankdragon26]

Its been a good day Rico. Started by Mrs Spimps 6am friskiness, to no work, to first rip of the auto. I am a lucky guy.

lol, mrs dragon wants me to take a few hits and completely kill my pain so she can have her friskiness lol

 

[AfricanGrower]

Great advice and personal knowledge there DonPaul! +reps for an overall well written post, I'm sure it will help many others as I'm sure it will will have great use in my future pans of flowering and height adjustments, AG

 

[ChopBro]

I started looking at that link yesterday, then something caught my eye , then something else, then......... Most definitely use both, hps up top & cfl's around the sides..... are there more than one of these lights w/remote bal ?

 

[fish cake]

Happy Skunkday NOtM Winner

 

[Spimp]

Im so honored to have won the contest. But maybe even more so, that we had over 90 votes in every contest!! Hopefully the sponsors see our turn out and keep putting together great prize packages!
Even if you didnt vote for my nug, I appreciate everyone that voted!

 

[CA215]

Congrats on NOTM Spimp, great job mate!!

 

[jetboy]

Congrats!!!

 

[ChopBro]

Congartulations Spimp That was a great nug

 

[alex801]

It would of pained me to crumble that nug up into pieces and smoke as it was so pretty

 

[trichomes]

great info. Don, sharing the love

 

[fish cake]

It would of pained me to crumble that nug up into pieces and smoke as it was so pretty

That is why I strive for ugly pot! don't bother me a bit to smoke it

 

[dankdragon26]

great job on NoTM Spimp, sorry i havent been around, having connection problems left and right atm

 

[CronicHempHog]

Happy Skunkday Spimp

 

[Crazycarl]

Grats Spimp

 

[donpaul.p]

congrats on the win, looks like we both got some very nice prizes coming to us, cant wait to get my hands on them,

with the comment about the lights on the last page, the outdoor flood lights are just 150watt hps lights and they come in their own like hood type thing, their suppose to sit on the ground and shine up the side of a building or a church, hotel or something similar, as long as its a hps floodlight then its just a standard hps with an enclosed hood, these will run cooler than the open hood type, plus the floodlight hps lights are much cheaper, but you would need to find a way of hanging them as the hood and bulb and ballast is one unit so it would all need mounting, but it would also keep the heat up top as the ballast is enclosed in the hood, their just 150watt hps flood lights, im pretty sure they was around £25 out of toolstation type places.

the grow light hps have a seperate ballast, so the ballast sits on the floor or mounted up high then you have a cable that runs to the hood where the bulb is, so the ballast is not attatched to the hood like the floodlight hps, but with the flood light hps you take them apart and fit a long cable from the ballast to the bulb so it works the same, dont try using the halogen sensor lights to grow with, im talking about hps floodlights, their usually in a black case and their used to light up the sides of hotels or churches, most are 150watt but they also do 1000watt flood lights as well, both are the same type of hps we use but they often cost a bit cheaper.

but you can pick up 400watt hps lights pretty cheap now,

now for the ballasts, years ago the ballasts wasnt digital, so this mean you had to have one ballast for the high pressure sodium bulb or flowering bulb as we use them for, you then had to have a seperate ballast if you wanted to run a metal halide bulb which is what we use for the veg stage,

but the ballasts you buy now are called digital ballasts, with these you can fit a hps bulb and a mh bulb, so you can run either bulb in the digital ballasts, dont try using the wrong bulbs in the older ballasts, not sure what the ballasts where called before but most ballasts you buy now are digital ballasts,

now you can also buy a hid ballast that has a power adjustment setting on it, so lets say you buy a 400watt digital ballast and it has the power settings, ive not tried one myself so dont take what i say as been correct but im sure someone will jump in and explain the settings, but basically with the digital ballasts that you can adjust the power setting on you can run them at a lower watt, so you could run them at 50% power and would work as a 200watt hps instead of a 400watt hps, but you can also increase it past 100% so you can get slightly more than 400watts out of the bulb but not sure how high the power setting goes, possibly around 110% so you do get a bit extra power from the light but you also reduce the life of the bulb a bit quicker, but if it runs to hot you could drop the power and run it at a lower setting to keep the heat down.

all 400watt ballasts run slightly higher than 400watts, the cheaper models often run at much lower and you wont be getting the best out of the bulb and ballast, but all decent ballasts will run as standard slightly higher than 400watts, not sure how much more ill find out, but a 400watt will run slightly higher than 400watts so you do get more out of the bulbs than what its saying, but the cheaper models can run at less than 400watts, now the problem with this is that the bulbs are made to run at 400watts or slightly more, if they run lower than this then the bulb might not be putting out the correct spectrum, when the bulbs are new they have pieces of metal inside the bulb that melt when the bulb is first lit, this is what produces the correct spectrum of light, so running the cheaper ballasts without the adjustable power setting can mean you not getting the correct spectrum out of the bulb.

sorry for hyjacking your thread Spimp, just thought id post the info about the ballasts,

so old type ballasts the none digital type you cant run a hps and mh bulb in them, you need a ballast for hps and a seperate ballast for mh, but the new digital ballasts that have been out a few years now can run both bulbs with no problems, but even if you had the old style ballast you can still run a dual spectrum bulb, so their is ways to get both spectrums using dual spectrum bulbs, the dual spec bulbs run at slightly lower lumins, with my 400watt digital ballast my dual spec bulb runs at 55,000 lumins, but the standard hps bulb runs at around 65,000 to 67,000 lumins, so you do lose some lumins for the dual spec capability, but outdoors the plants getting the full spectrum so i think the dual spec bulb benefits the plants more as its giving them the red and blue spectrum throughout the whole grow instead of just the red spectrum for flower and blue spectrum for veg,

with cfls their are a few different kelvin types and they even do full spectrum cfls as well, but basically you want as follows
23 watt 6400kelvin cfls for veg,
23 watt 2700kelvin cfls for flower,
how ever its best to run a mixture of the 2 for each stage of growth,
so for veg you want a 3 to 1 ratio of cfls, so 3 x 6400k and 1 2700k or can run 2 to 1 if you have plenty of bulbs,
for flower you want the opposite so 3x 2700k and 1 6400k or again 2 to 1 ratio, i find this method gives the best results as your giving the plant both spectrums.

 

[Spimp]

No worries donpaul.p. Your info is always valuable. The old ballast were called magnetic ballasts. Most of the ballast today are generation 3 digital. These are the ones that are dimmable.

Got a descion to make today about bubba. She is in bad shpe. She is 16 days old and smaller than my week old auto sprouts. Also I have other interesting news. I bought some perlite a month ago and just noticed it has nutes in it! Small levels, but MG just cant sell anything without throwing some feed in with it. Im hoping the double dose of MG didnt kill bubba.
BTW, Good Weed all.

 

[CA215]

Good, (is it) MUNCHDAY, spimp!!?
Anyway, good day to you sir
Gotta watch out for the MG stuff, sneaky nutes..

 

[Spimp]

Good MucnhyDay sir.
Ya,I would have never guessed they put nutes into the perlite.
Im taking drastic measures with bubba kush today. I Put her ass out in the sun. Its do or die time! Her newest set of leaves has some green to it, but the older leaves are basically nute burned up pretty bad.

Time for a confession. I spent some money I wasnt supposed to spend yesterday. Mrs. Spimp is furious. It was 'her' money. Long story short, even the 60$ 150w hps is now out of the question. I f'ed this one up guys. Totally my fault too. I was being greedy and self serving and now it set us back even more. Time to start selling some garage sh*t...

But, on a brighter note, Blue is looking fantastic. Shes really picking up ambers everyday. She even has some foxtailing going on. Im debating the chop day. Maybe Ill psot some pics and you guys can see what I mean. She smells amazing. Im hoping to pull 7g's from her. Coulda been more but I stunted her with the hoopty rig Im pretty sure. BUT, Ill take better care of her little sis and see if I can get closer to 14. Eve If I only pull 7, that would be around 32g combined for that run. Im good with that given my Ghetto CFL rig

 

[CajunCelt]

Im so honored to have won the contest. But maybe even more so, that we had over 90 votes in every contest!! Hopefully the sponsors see our turn out and keep putting together great prize packages!
Even if you didnt vote for my nug, I appreciate everyone that voted!

Do we get a chunk of the bud if we voted for you?

 

[KingJohnC]

Congratulations on winning Nug of the Month - August 2013!