Sponsored Grow Journal, Featuring The Cultiuana CT-720 LED Grow Light, 27gal SIP Containers & Clones

Emilya Green

Emilya Green

Well-Known Member
2 Member of the Month
June 2022 3 Grow Journal of the Month
June 2022
Cultiuana Full Spectrum 720 Watt Grow Light

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This beast has just been installed above my clones. At 60% I am showing 49k LUX at the top center of the canopy.

This is a SIP container grow, using @GeoFlora Nutrients and good old Missouri tap water. The plants are all clones from my last run, plants that were started in solo cups 91 days ago and whom we will get to know better in future posts. This is my first run in these 27 gallon SIP tubs and so far things seem to be working very well. I just watered today, after going for 9 days without any intervention... and I probably could have gone 9 more. I am starting to really like SIP.

Here are some specs on the grow light:
  • 720W power
  • 2.8 umol/j efficacy
  • IP65 Waterproof
  • 2016 umol/s total light output
  • Personal Flower:5'x5'ft / Commercial Flower:4'x4'ft
  • SanAn white LEDs with 660nm deep reds (Osram diodes)
  • Onboard dimming function (100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, OFF)
  • Daisy-chainable up to 100 fixtures.
  • Compatible with Cultiuana lighting controller
  • Fanless design for heat dissipation
  • 5-Year warranty
  • 0-10V dimming


The spectrum produced by this light is outstanding and I expect the plants to love this light!

CT-720 LED Grow Light Spectrum:​

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CT-720 PPFD Charts in 4' x 4' Grow Tent:​

Hanging over 6"／152mm
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Hanging over 12"/300mm
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This is an outstanding light spread! I already anticipate an amazing grow under this monster of a light! Thank you to @Cultiuana for a chance to showcase this powerhouse!

We are now in mid-Veg. The plants were all transplanted to 7 gallon cloth containers and moved into the SIP 9 days ago. I plan on Vegging them for another month before switching to bloom. The lights are presently on 18/6. The space is a mylar lined 6x7x6.5 attic grow room. It is presently Fall in Missouri, and the ambient temperature is not a factor at this time.
 
The plants are loving the new light! Last night I cranked it up to 80% just to see how the plants responded.

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That light is a beast. I was wondering how long it would be until you missed your watering routine? It sounds like you're enjoying the break.
 
LKABudMan said:
That light is a beast. I was wondering how long it would be until you missed your watering routine? It sounds like you're enjoying the break.
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Emilya Green said:
The plants are loving the new light! Last night I cranked it up to 80% just to see how the plants responded.

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Take it easy! Turn it down! Not to protect the plants, but to protect you from having too much plant too quickly! You'll be flowering in 16 days, I guarantee it. lol.
 
ReservoirDog said:
Take it easy! Turn it down! Not to protect the plants, but to protect you from having too much plant too quickly! You'll be flowering in 16 days, I guarantee it. lol.
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You were right! One day of that brightness and these plants were leaping to attention. There is a such thing as too much light, depending on the situation. Holy crow, this light is going to sizzle when we get to bloom!

I will also want to go to bloom sooner rather than later with this setup, or I am really going to have a situation on my hands. This run is teaching me that these large 27g SIP tubs will be going outside to be my above ground backyard garden, next spring. 2 plants in each container, in this garden, is just going to be too much. 5g buckets are not big enough. My next build will be 17 gallon tubs, holding one plant each. I am betting I could get 6 of them under this light, easily.

Here they are today, with the light now backed down to 40%.

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All the tub size really means in our case is how large the reservoir is. That has no impact on growth size comparatively if all are kept full. What you need is maybe just a 17 inside a 27 used as the actual planter and plant 2 per 17gal planter. That's worked well for me. Honestly, I'm dealing with the situation by planting very small plants and aggressively training. I put 90 deg. bend clips in the mainstalk to keep low and train away from the other plant. when I went to flower my plant was only 12' high. Had bud site locations like crazy, it wasn't final weight limited, just low-slung as hell.

I bet you could grow a 1 kilo single plant using SIP under that light.... (2.2lbs). I'm gonna try under mine soon. 1100w LED bar light
 
For whatever reason, these plants are going insane. I have already trimmed one of the early ones just to keep the canopy even. The @Cultiuana CT-720 light is incredible and clearly it is covering further out than its physical footprint, because I can see that the plants on the edges are not reaching at all. I am going to have to rearrange this room a bit, but so far I am not quite sure how I want to do it. It's not going to be an easy task either, because as of yet the tubs are not on wheels, so I want to know where I am moving them to, without a lot of rearranging afterward.

Today was feeding day, so I top dressed @GeoFlora Nutrients VEG 2/3 cup, and then top watered with two of my watering pitchers per plant, approximately 7 cups. For the rest of the next two weeks, I will allow the SIP to water and feed these plants without any additional top watering... so far they don't seem hungry and don't seem to need any extra help, even though the nutes were top dressed and watered in from the top only once.

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Wonderful to see Emilya. SIPs will work in many sizes and shapes. What's important, because not all designs that fall under the Sub Irrigated Planter categories include this feature, is the air gap. It counteracts over-wetness from below, it oxygenates - thereby dramatically reducing the odds of a total failure, it allows for very effective flushing if nutes are too high or you're a pre-harvest famine inducer, and much, much more. This gap really looks to me like the breakthrough here (not that it's new) and is what permits the efficient root morphology that I discussed with you in our first exchange.

I've experimented with actual wicks coming up from otherwise completely separated reservoirs, and even tried some DIYs that housed rez in a different container, to the side, and used wicking fabric (hemp rope in this case, thought it apropos) to water plants. All they amount to in the end is a slightly over-wet container grow without the gonzo growth factor.

In my guerilla days (I planted outdoors in exceptionally remote, private boat access only locations at high altitudes, and with some custom strains we developed specifically for such hostile locales. For eight seasons we developed methods that permitted us to plant our clones and then return, optimally, just once at harvest. It was a bloody military operation, I can tell you. Anyway, over eight seasons we really made a lot of headway with supplying indiv. water supplies and using local snow melt and rain collection in automated yet passive fashions, while also digging holes twice as large as they needed to be so we could deposit rotting logs into the holes. That punky wood appeared to halve evaporative losses... no kidding. Hugel Kulture has so many pros and few, if any, cons.

Where was I going with all this...? Aha, yes, self-watering... I've worked with a lot of ideas over time and a proper air gap just transforms the grow. I heartily recommend these totes for outdoor gardening, however there are issues to be aware of that I'll provide in a moment.

You can expect 100 tomatoes per plant of reg. size fruit in frost zones 4-9, not cherries, I mean normal, non-determinate varieties. Determinates still mopped the floor compared with beds and containers growing the same plants. I even cloned a tomato plant to test this out and it is quite true.

Aldo's Peppers is the best SIP information on the internet coming from a single person or small group. Check him out, he's got raised beds with SIPs. Growdoctorguides has two excellent designs, one a very large, cedar deck planter. I imagine I've already rec'd Grow Doc to you on some thread somewhere, please forgive my redundancy and long-windedness, I can't seem to stop.

So Emilya, whaddya say we start a SIP thread like the one for Quad plant training? Your seniority makes you choice number one, however, I realize that you are likely overcommitted already so I'd like to mention that I strongly believe we can police things as a group without needing you to pop by daily. However, it'd be nice if you started it, I hope you'll consider this, and I hereby, in writing, promise to monitor it daily myself, but for those instances and occasions out of my control. You wouldn't have a commitment, or, don't have to anyway.

So, the black totes do have good UV survivability, but they can get hot as blazes during the summer. Result: I will always paint white, which no amount of surface prep can prevent from flanking off only a few months later, or apply reflective material/white duct tape for outdoor use. This is a real issue you ought to develop a plan for. The soil gets waaay too hot in direct, high-summer, sun. Almost boiled a plant more than once.

I have seen 10-14 gal totes grow cannabis monsters, esp. when they use a lid but cut a hole in the center for a custom, extra-long wicking foot made with perf pipe or drilled PVC, then, attach to a cloth, 3-7 gal pot which sits atop the tote with lid on, permitting the entire tote to become the reservoir. Counterintuitively, this moves your soil deck almost 6 inches lower and shrinks your footprint, while dramatically increasing rez size. Win-win... win!

Fertigating from below also works really well for plants in SIPs and the effect is like coco that gets watered 24 times a day, the shit just shows off and goes off!

The other thing to note is, that, as you can tell, growth is approaching DWC speeds. Experienced people say about 3/4, and as such means that toxicities, lockout, pH issues, also come so fast and so completely that you have to be aware of this or you'll under-react initially. The soil or matrix buffers somewhat, and reduces likelihood, but I've seen some really dramatic stuff. Organics will of course reduce but not eliminate this, and LOS protects yet another step more. Regardless, I think every SIP grower needs to be informed of this, and then we can compare notes and eventually move this whole method forward.

Best to you and yours, (all of you out there too) rd.
 
I don't expect a lot of problems to show up, quickly or not, since this is still an organic grow. The soil is definitely getting enough moisture in each of the 7g containers, and at least with this design, we know that the SIP works well. I am going to experiment with some smaller tubs to start my next plants in, and am looking seriously at some 12 gallon tubs to run single 7 gallon plants in. For now we are dealing with these 27 gallon monster tubs under a monster light.

A careful look at the room shows me that I have enough room for the light where it is at, if the plants don't stretch more than 100%. I will be moving a trigger light to the room before I flip, just for this purpose.

The plants are loving the SIPs and loving their new @Cultiuana light! All of the plants, if sent to bloom today, would have 15-30 buds apiece, and appear that they will be highly productive plants. In this mylar lined room, with the 720w of bloom power this light is going to produce, I am confident that we are going to get lots of tight hard buds.

Here are the plants today, 1 day after feeding and all looking extremely healthy.

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ReservoirDog said:
teeny bit concerned for your vert, space but we'll pray together if that's what it takes. What say you?
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That is precisely why I have a deep red light ready to install in there when I flip... which will be fairly soon... just waiting on my second caregiver license to be approved so I can be in bloom with more than 6 plants, and it should come through any day now. There is no sense in waiting any longer with these 3 month old clones, since it is obvious they have taken to the SIP very well. The roots must be as impressive as the plants are, above ground.

With the deep red light guiding them through stretch, it has been fairly well proven that deep red for the first 10 minutes before the @Cultiuana comes on, will keep stretch to about 60% of the present height, especially after I crank up the big light to 80% at first and then 100% as we transition to bloom. Even at 100% stretch at this point, I still have room vertically... barely.

I also like it very much that Cultiuana is watching this grow, so they can witness the effect that just deep red used as a trigger light has on this grow, to keep stretch to a minimum. I think a similar benefit could be seen regarding trichomes with switchable UV light, only running it for a few hours around noon time, and those experiments will be done over this next year as I become able to install those specialty supplemental lights in both rooms. I dream of a commercial light that has the ability to run just these banks of lights on a special circuit separate to the one that keeps entire full spectrum being lit. I had a friend who had built one of these back more than a decade ago and he called it his dial-a-light. He was way ahead of his time. Mahalo my friend, wherever you are.
 
Today finds us at day 74 of veg. Looking in this room, I can well believe it is day 74 of veg... oMG! These plants are massive and are totally loving it under the @Cultiuana CT-720. Not only are they responding very strongly to the light, even at 40% brightness, but note the evenness of the canopy. Plants at each end and on the edges look just the same as the plants in the middle! This light is very evenly spread out, with strong light everywhere. This hands down already can be seen to be the best light I have ever run and I am over the moon about this and can't wait to see what it does in bloom!

They were fed @GeoFlora Nutrients VEG 5 days ago. In the SIP buckets in the other room, a need to top water periodically can be seen, as the microbes/nutes seem to be having difficulty getting down to the roots with just SIP action alone. The 27g tub SIPs in this room don't seem to have that problem. Plenty of moisture is wicking up all the way to the surface with these dual 50 sq/inch wick feet, and the Geoflora seems to be doing its usual great job. We will watch this carefully as we move into bloom, but I think the difference is going to be in the design of the wick foot when comparing these two grows.

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Today I had to raise the light... significantly. I need to switch to bloom, soon. Egads! I may have to resort to more chopping.

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JoetheChro said:
Loool.

My apologies Emilya. No wonder they look so big.

Please continue and ignore any further outbursts on my part 😂
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no apology needed dear Joe... but you did make me laugh. SIP is blowing my mind though, and I wouldn't be surprised if by starting out in SIP, this amount of growth could actually be done in 6 or 7 weeks. I will know soon, when I start the next seeds.
 
Emilya Green said:
no apology needed dear Joe... but you did make me laugh. SIP is blowing my mind though, and I wouldn't be surprised if by starting out in SIP, this amount of growth could actually be done in 6 or 7 weeks. I will know soon, when I start the next seeds.
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Won’t clog your fine thread up but going SIP next round. If you can’t beat them join them 🙏👊
 
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