Quote:
Originally Posted by NorEastFla
Excellent video, halfway!
It's hard to tell in the video, but is your reservoir lid transparent?
The reason I'm asking is because if light can hit your reservoir solution, you'll have hell to pay with your pH and algae growth.
Great little system you have there!
What's the combined wattage of your lights?
What's the total square footage of your grow area? |
Both lids are black with another coat of white. Actually about 2 coats of each. The tank portion of tray and reservoir are both multi-coated black. I could not find the bins I wanted in a dark color, but thank God for "plastic" rustoleum.
I have 3 2-socket 48 inch shop lights for a total of 6 lights. They are T8, so 32w each. All of them are 6500k for vegetative growth as I am only growing lettuce and basil at this point.
The grow area is roughly 18 inches wide by 40 inches long if I avoid the low-light end portions of the lamps. I kept the lights raised for the video, but I am actually keeping the light between 2-4 inches above the plants as I do with my starts in the Spring. Since they throw very little heat, the temp never really exceeds 72 degrees, so my lettuce should make it to full harvest before bolting. We'll see.
I'm still studying lighting solutions for peppers and tomatoes as I'm gonna need a larger area and red wavelengths to support flowing stages. I'll keep those comments and questions in the lighting thread.
This system was originally designed to fit as a single unit tray inside the reservoir), but I didn't like the method of topping off or refilling solution so I seperated it. I have room on that workspace to double the setup. I will likely do that once this first batch teaches me a few things on design and efficiency. I like the idea of having 12 full 5 inch pot capacity.