[apartmentblower]

are AF's affected by light leaks?

[BlackMagic]

Yes?

During 18/6 cycle. Cause's some stress but they tolerate alot before complaining.

Hell just give em 24 light, or 4/20 where the 4 hours are times that u "know" light wont leak.

[Kuroth]

Originally Posted by BlackMagic

Yes?

During 18/6 cycle. Cause's some stress but they tolerate alot before complaining.

Really???? I had never heard this.. (I am new to all this) But I thought the point of AF's was that they dont need a Solid 12 hrs of Dark??? They Auto Flower no matter what??? Please elaborate...

Originally Posted by BlackMagic

Yes?

During 18/6 cycle. Cause's some stress but they tolerate alot before complaining.

Yes, please explain your experience behind this claim.

In my quest to make FEM AFs over the years, Light stress, STS, gib acid, ect.... I tried many, different schedules of lighting, to stress them out to the extreem, like 6/6 shecdule,, 6 on 6 off 6 on 6 off each day, and many others, never did they stress to the piont of hermi, or mutated growth. The only thing they showed was lack of light, AFs need at least 18 hours of light each day during flowering to grow to thier full potencial.
It is also how I figured out that 24 hours on during VEG and 20/4 during flowering is the best schedule for maximum production, and healthiest plants. I had a big thread on all the experiments I was doing back on HB.net, sucks ass that all that work/info is gone.

I have massive light leaks in one of my little cabs, and its my AF cab, it receives all kinda light leaks, never had a nanner yet.

[BlackMagic]

Originally Posted by IceColdCrickets

Yes, please explain your experience behind this claim.

In my quest to make FEM AFs over the years, Light stress, STS, gib acid, ect.... I tried many, different schedules of lighting, to stress them out to the extreem, like 6/6 shecdule,, 6 on 6 off 6 on 6 off each day, and many others, never did they stress to the piont of hermi, or mutated growth. The only thing they showed was lack of light, AFs need at least 18 hours of light each day during flowering to grow to thier full potencial.
It is also how I figured out that 24 hours on during VEG and 20/4 during flowering is the best schedule for maximum production, and healthiest plants. I had a big thread on all the experiments I was doing back on HB.net, sucks ass that all that work/info is gone.

Never said it would make the ladies go both sexes, i've done 2 exactly same set-up (150w hps) grows to verify myself that lightleaks causes stress on AF strains. And YES, the set-up with lightleaks in the cabinet yielded 20-30% less.

[Kuroth]

Originally Posted by BlackMagic

Never said it would make the ladies go both sexes, i've done 2 exactly same set-up (150w hps) grows to verify myself that lightleaks causes stress on AF strains. And YES, the set-up with lightleaks in the cabinet yielded 20-30% less.

Interesting but I would think it would take much more then just 2 compare runs to determine if this was true??? I would think there is like 100 different things that could have caused one of your yelds to be 20-30% less..

BUT I am not talking from expereince as I am very new to all this.. Just the first time I had heard this.. But yes, thanks for the Info and what you have personally expereiced so far.. Keep us informed if you do any more compares with different light schedules and darkness on Autos and let us know your results..

Thanks!

[krazycure]

This has been debated many times, I myself posted a thread a few months ago to try to get the real final answer. I don't think anyone knows for sure. Yes, we've bred these hybrids to flower under any amount of light. Does that mean the 12/12 strain IN the hybrid no longer expresses ANY of it's light-sensitivity traits in the hybrid simply because the autoflower trait is established? Can we really say, without a doubt: that even though an AF-hybrid has some 12/12 genes in it, that it does not react to lighting changes AT ALL like a 12/12 would? Not even a little? Let's say a 12/12 strain receives pretty regular light leaks,and it either stunts or hermi's it. Would an AF under the same conditions exhibit any similar signs, no signs, or extremely delayed signs? It's really hard to say. I would say that our best bet is to establish a dark period, and keep that period dark throughout the grow as much as possible, just to be on the safe side.

[dev0n]

I was moving some equipment out of my seedling room eight nights ago and accidentally hit the grow shelf with my LED flashlight -- it caught two Russian Rocket Fuel AF ladies on the end of a row that were almost ready to be moved under the HPS in the grow room. A few days later they had sprouted ball sacks at their node bases. Now there is a chance I'd misread their sex or it was something else that stressed them, etc, but I'm reasonably certain I read the situation right.

For the record, they started out their lives under 24/7 CFLs and after their second set of true leaves took a seriously long pause in their growth. This was somewhat uncharacteristic for this strain, so I put them on 18/6 to give them a dark period and they perked up immediately and started growing new leaves, and showing sex rather early even. This was eight or nine days before the above incident.