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Old 01-05-2017, 04:40 AM
GpsFrontier GpsFrontier is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Lake Havasu AZ.
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Hello newhydro16,

Quote:
How high should my lights be from the lettuce? I'm using the square colored leds. Currently have them about 10 inches from them.
led's aren't the best lighting to use in my opinion. Mainly for two reasons, first good quality LED's aren't cheap, and won't really save you much of anything in electrical costs. The break even point between higher equipment costs and lower electrical costs is generally 5-10 years. Personality I'm not going to wait 5-10 years to break even and start saving money. Second, the quality of the LED's for growing plants is all over the place. Not only are there thousand of manufactures making them, but the quality and wavelengths/spectrum vary greatly from one manufacture to another. Not only that but you can't tell good quality LED's from low quality ones by price either. The market is flooded with low quality LED's (mainly from china) that they charge high prices for. So you really have to do your homework on the specific lights you get.

But just like with Florescent lighting, you want LED's to be as close to the plants as possible without burning the plants. Again the quality and wavelengths output of the LED's lights are going to make a big difference in the amount of usable light the plants get.

Quote:
PH has been around 6, but while I'm only on day six, I'm not seeing the growth that people claim they have in such a short time.
I don't know who your talking to who claim great results in 6 days, and I don't even know the progress of the plants your growing. So I cant say if they are growing slowly or normally. However first, six days isn't very long, second lettuce plants usually start off slowly. Their very tiny seeds. Third if I remember correctly you said you transplanted them, and it generally takes a about 4-7 days to get over transplant shock.

But if they are growing slowly there could be many reasons. Some of the typical reasons are not enough light, temperatures (both air and water temps), humidity levels, moisture levels to the roots, oxygen levels to the roots, nutrients, even pests and/or disease. I would have to know more about the details of your system and growing environment to see if there are any problems.

Quote:
Would I be better with my pump which has two outlets, run the lines into one and just have one stone, currently have one line teed off in the tank, so there are three stones, but I'm wondering if these stones I got,(cheap, ebay) are not the best.
First without pictures I can't tell much. I gave you pictures of what it should look like in a previous post. Second. air stones are typically cheap, depending on size usually run from 1 to 3 bucks. However they can clog from time to time. I get them at Wal-mart for about $2, but you can get them anywhere they sell pet supply's.

Lastly, no mater how you run the lines or how many air stones you use, you can't make the pump be able to put out more air. Sure if you run both lines into one air stone you will see more air bubbles from that air stone, but only because your pumping more air through the air stone. Kind of like if you have two glasses each filled half way with water, then you pour the water from one glass into the other. Now you have one full glass. But not because you made more water, it's still the same amount of water, just in one glass instead of two.

If your air pump has two outlets, use both of them. Use one air stone for each line. Don't split the line to connect more air stones, that wont make more air bubbles. It just dilutes them because it has to split the air output to more stones. You'll notice in the pictures I posted earlier there are two air lines coming from the pump. Each air line is connected to one air stone. so there are two air stones in the bottom of the bucket and one twin output aquarium air pump for 30-60 gallon fish tanks supplying all the air.

Quote:
when I mix new batch of nutes, do I still need to add the flora bloom, seeing as this is lettuce I'm trying to grow.
I'm' going to assume you' referring to the General Hydroponics Flora series nutrients. Not general Hydroponics Flora Nova series. Their two different nutrient lines. With the Flora series nutrients it has three parts Gro, Micro, And Bloom. Yes you need all three parts to work. You still need to use the Bloom, but not as much of it. For lettuce I would mix it 15 ml Gro, 10 ml micro, and 5 ml Bloom per gallon of water for full strength nutrients. (5 ml is 1 teaspoon, 15 ml is 3 teaspoons or 1 tablespoon).
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