need grow light assistance

[billgo2]

I grow my cactus plants inside as I posted in late September. I need some assistance from someone that is familiar with Mars Hydro FC-E3000 operation and can help me with changing from overwinter settings to growing season settings. I plan to do this in late March, but I have no ideas how. I do not like to wait until the last minute to come up with a plan.

[Steve-0]

Hey Bill, I'm at 4500 feet above sea level (more intense sun at altitude) in a cactus loving high mountain desert climate...so very little grow lights experience for me. I overwinter the natives in ground and the less hardy in South facing windows.

We do use a grow lights system for our veggie garden plants, seeds, starts, etc. But they are tube lights

So a little Google search and this video may be of use since most are Weed growing videos and I don't mean cockleburs.

This Brit has your system and has a youtube channel Cactimania so it should have some applicable info.

Show us your setup and good luck. The cacti are looking great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rYhlCXAH00

[eulaspiegel]

Hi,
nice setup! I saw in your previous post that you are keeping your cacti in that setup year round. What temperatures do you get in this room during different seasons? And how many hours of light are you giving them per day?

I can describe the way I do my winter/summer transition, but I would still consider myself a relative beginner at this, so no guarantees that this works.. I already did this very similarly last year. I had much fewer adult plants at that point, but at least I got my Mammillarias to develop a lot of flowers.

All my cacti that prefer a cold winter dormancy spent the whole of December and January in a cold (~5°C) and dark environment. The first week of February I slowly got them used to room temperature and strong light again, 1h the first day, 2h the second etc until I got to 8h, at which point I completely left them in the summer growing setup. I have sprayed them a few times since then to "wake them up", and a few are now already starting to show signs of life. They are under 11.5h of light per day right now, I am increasing it by 30 min every two weeks, so that I am at 15h by June (which will be the summer maximum). In terms of temperature, it fluctuates between 25°C during the days (and I also have an additional "hot" cabinet where the day temperature is around 30-35) to around 20 at night.

[billgo2]

The room has heat and air in it, but it is turned off. During overwinter time (November through March), if it is 25 or 30° F outside, I cannot get it much lower than 60° F inside. I use 8 hours of light in overwinter and 12 hours during the summer. I have 24 hour dehumidifier and 24 hour 16" oscillating fan running. I have about 170 plants.
I can raise and lower the lights as well as adjust the brightness (Illluminance) of each of the 3 fixtures. There are timers installed on each fixture. I use a lux meter for adjustments for light density and moving plants around during change of seasons.

[eulaspiegel]

Do you change from 8 to 12h suddenly or gradually? I looked up the daylengths at different seasons at the US/Mexican border (as a compromise, since I have species from different latitudes), and it seems to be around 10h at its lowest and 14h maximum, and I used the daylengths in different months as a rough guidance for how I set the daylength. So in regards to your original question, I think gradually increasing the light hours as the temperatures increase might be a good idea, and maybe also gradually increase the light intensity (if you are not running it at maximum now). I don't know when the best timepoint to start watering is, but it will depend on when they start showing signs of new growth I suppose.