Looking to start my own grow. Need a list of suitable equipment for a small dark room

Hello people. Wanting to start my own grow. I have a small room I can put a tent in. I just dont know what tent and lighting is best. Or the feed. Lighting heights. Basically know nothing but would be thankful to anybody who could help! Thank you in advance.

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I guess the best starting point is what is your budget? No sense in people suggesting things that are out of your reach. How many plants do you want to grow at one time? What approximately are the room dimensions?

Oh, welcome to the best place on the interweb!

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Welcome to the community when you get ready to buy I do recommend get the tent with the most height your space will accommodate. To give you plenty of room for exhaust fan, Rigging & lights.

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5 plants. Blue gelato. Got a room sized arou d 8 ft by 10 ft height is fine around 8ft high. Budget is a couple hundred. First time growing just trying to experiment and learn what youtube or tele doesnt show you . Thanks

If you have low fund’s i would get mh/hps lights for 6 plant i use 2 600w hps mh lights and check Craigslist and offer up lot’s of people buy new stuff burn up their crop and sell it for pennies on the dollar.
I wouldn’t waste money on cheap leds or blurple light you will end up buying better one’s latter on

Don’t be cheap on lights and ph meter and get reference solution to calibrate your ph meter and check your ph meter often i really like the apera ph 60 meter it has replaceable probes and saves you alot of problems
I don’t know of a budget nutrient line

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Welcome @Ianswan1 to the forum
Low budget you should probably listen to @ThcinKC
Try to find used equipment.
I have a 3x4 tent growing 4 plants and i have spent around 750.00
Good lighting is hugely important.

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The apera ph60 gets my vote great little meter. Dyna
Gro would be affordable cannabis-friendly nute line.

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So I was on a budget when I bought everything and I bought some cheapo lights off amazon they work but not that great I bought a 4x4 tent and that big of an area is expensive for the lights and I was only able to put 4 in there comfortably so my suggestion would be to get a 3x3 and grow 2 plants or even just a 2x2 and grow one. The price of the lights will go down dramatically if you do that. As someone stated about you could get MH/HPS but a huge downfall of those are they are very expensive to run and put out a lot of heat so there’s that. Also you can go fox farm trio nutes those will get the job done along with fox farm happy frog and ocean forest soil

So the LEDs are worth buying. I read on another forum you need 50 true watts for every square ft. Giving you a wider spread and a bigger yeild is this true?

The better quality LED lights you can get by with 40 watts per square foot. And grow dense buds. When you get into the less expensive LEDs blues and purples you will need more true wattage.

Good leds from like hlg are worth the money the cheap ones will say 1000w but only draw 200 watts from the wall and will be a bad yeild

If using leds you save on electric bill but will buying more cal mag also have to have the room heated better in winter either way because you will be running a exhaust system mh/hps have the heat for winter and then hot in summer there’s a trade off for each one i love my mh/hps lights always have great results with it and have now added 288 quantum board’s and colored led strips.
For 2 288qb and the driver to run it was a little over 200 dollars and that is diy build there’s a diy light thread on here that is very good reading
Here’s pictures of what my lights are like. Also helps to do a price list of everything because some of this is expensive to get everything all at once.

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when you start looking at tents, make sure you pay attention to where the ports are placed so that it works for you in your given space (like… if your ceiling is 8 feet and you get an 8 foot tent, make sure there are exhaust ports on the top sides because there won’t be room above). if you’re running photos and need to seal off light i would also make sure your tent has the round sock ports on the bottom for intake or you’ll find yourself having to cut something to cover up the passive mesh ports usually found down there.

tent- highest possible with the right arrangements for you (exhaust and intake)
lights- just make the jump to horticulture lighting group quantum board kits if you can (HLG)
ph pen- you can’t go wrong with the apera
two small 6-8" fans, maybe more depending on what size you get
ventilation - exhaust fan and a carbon filter for down the road (if smell is important don’t go with anything under $100) as well as the ducts
likely a humidifier this time of year to put inside the tent
consider temp/humidity monitor that you can monitor from your phone (Govee and a bunch of others)
heating mat is nice for your seedlings
possibly a water filter

soil and nutes… need to ask yourself a few questions. do you want to mix bottles together? do you want to grow organically? do you want to water every two days or be able to go longer?

I would say a decent set up will run you 600-800. if you think you’re going to get into this, bite the bullet if you can because otherwise you’re going to end up just spending more later to replace the junk you initially purchased.

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He’s 100% correct. Out of that budget he posted, 50% or or more of that budget should be spend on lighting. If you don’t have good light, you won’t have good weed.
Well, rephrased, you’ll grow weed, but your yield will suffer, and you’ll end up with smaller plants.

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thinking more on it i’d take a look at the good lights at HLG and pick the one that you can afford and then design your grow space around that. if you’re just testing the waters you can’t go wrong with the QB120 and a 2x2 tent to just try out one plant. at least i can’t think of a way you could wrong lol. until half way through your grow you realize… i need more plants! if you end up with a bigger tent later there’s no reason you can’t use this one and buy another one to run together.

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i made this for a friend not long ago. you can always find stuff cheaper or more expensive but hopefully this gives you an idea. nutes not included but the cheapest method i’m finding is super soil. really intrigued by coast of maine. it would be like $20 per plant.

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First time growing. With this kind of set up, do you have high electricity bill that it is the first give away?

You’ll need pots or fabric bags to put some dirt in… LoL that’s overlooked a lot of times and the soil won’t stay in a pile.
Boom - your welcome!!! :sunglasses::grin:
Seriously though welcome to the site can’t wait to see some bud porn. Get em growing man and keep it green…:+1:

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If growing is legal for you, then you can get by with a light, some soil, and good genetics.

You can skip the other things initially if you grow autoflowering plants or seal the 8x10 room from outside light.

You will probably want a carbon filter before your start flowering. Even in a legal area, you don’t want to deal with the smell of plants upsetting neighbors or tipping off crooks.

We just spec’d a complete build in another thread. It is more budget friendly than the suggestions I’m seeing here so far (no disrespect to the excellent suggestions).

With all my other grow areas on my electric bill went up 35 dollars i run about 180 to 225 a month on the electric bill but trash service is included and water to on the Bill

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