# light leaks



## lancerjay (Mar 10, 2009)

hi all,
newbie here on my first grow so am learniing by the day.
im growing 3 plants at the mo and am a bit concerned.
im growing in a cupboard (yeah i now) its a big cupboard, any way im about 6 weeks flowering, what would happen if the slightest bit of light leaks in in the dark period because i have small cracks round the door where light from the kitchenn light must leak in how will this effect the plants? ive sealed them now but im curious what damage i have done?
cheers for any help
jay


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## TURKEYNECK (Mar 10, 2009)

Light leak can cause your plants to hermie. Seal it up with weather stripping or something, but if you're in week six the damage may already be done. GL


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## lancerjay (Mar 10, 2009)

cheers for that fella ive just checked them and it dosnt look like any are hermaphrodites thank god


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## Lemmongrass (Mar 10, 2009)

okay i dont get this at ALL.

how can they need absolute darkness. the only place on earth that its absolutely dark is in a cave. what about the stars, what about the moon, what about a full moon? neighbor's lights while growing in your backyard, light pollution from the nearby city?

nowhere outside is totally dark, and pot plants haven't always hermed constantly from light.

my room is dark enough that you cant see your hands or anythign, but its not sealed. its a big dark room so the light get diffuse before it gets to the plants.

you may anna tape yoru cracks sicne i assume the are right on yoru plants and would shine actual slits of light onto them. but if not(close a digi camera recording video in it) then i cant see how it matters.


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## Johnnyrotten123 (Mar 10, 2009)

Riteon Lotek- Man, i've been thinking the same thing. I'm on my first indoor grow and about to go 12/12. Theres probly a few threads somewhere on here explaining the light thing better. Maybe the plan is to try to keep it totally dark as it wud be "ideal"-not sure but i bet most hermies were gunna herm-up no matter what sooner or later:holysheep:  My last 2 outdoor grows had Christmas lights blinking around the whole garden to keep deer and other critters away from the flowers/vegetables- not alotta light but no plants turned weird because of it. In fact 5lb off 6 plants was the yield last summer. I didn't know about the light/hermie thing till i started studying up on indoor growing-thanks


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## Rockster (Mar 10, 2009)

Not only can a light leak make your plants hermie,it can make the plants reduce resin production markedly so any kind of light leak might be reducing the potential of your plants and I had a light leak years ago on a KC Brains Mango crop and it had so little resin it could not be smoked as bud and was made into a pitifully small amount of hash.

So I know for a fact any kind of light leak is bad.Some strains may not be affected but why invite potential problems?

Outdoors I've had plants that have had light pollution from the house and they finished very nicely but don't know if had there been no light pollution the pot may have matured sooner?

It's not fair to compare indoors to outside and say,well as there's moonlight and starlight I'll not bother to make sure my indoor grow is 100% lightproof.

Seal your room,anything else is a joke.


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## CasualGrower (Mar 10, 2009)

Let's face it, in the outdoors you cannot control moonlight, stars, lightning storms the flashing light on the tower down the road or the random meteorite along with anything else that can happen.....

Now most of this is all very low intensity light that will not kick a plant out of the rest phase and interrupt the photoperiod.  That is what you are really guarding against.  That being said, I will agree with Rockster that any light can only harm to a minor extent.  That is WHY we are growing indoors.... WE are controlling our plants TOTAL enviroment... We do this to maximize the potential of the plant....

Now a couple pinholes of light in your darkroom is not a HUGE deal IMO....  If you are growing a strain that is that finicky about light that it will hermie with a pinhole of light, then it is not a very dominant genepool and would need some refining....


All this being said.... Keep your room as dark as humanly possible.


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## Johnnyrotten123 (Mar 10, 2009)

Well only reason i compare outdoor to indoor is because i have only outdoor experience. I'll stop doing this as this is the second issue thats caused me to question, and been told they're not the same. Now last year wasn't moonlight or stars on my outdoor grow, it was Christmas lights and also now u mention it, house lights, and things were GREAT.  BUT, why i'm not gunna go outa my way to let light in during 12/12, if  a few leaks get in, so be it. Done comparing. At least outdoors, ya just had animals, wind, drought conditions, torrential rain, snow , tempertures up and down, Guess a lil light leaking shud not worry me!!


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## Johnnyrotten123 (Mar 10, 2009)

Thanks CG, cleared it up. Hope i never see a hermie   Just my 3rd year growing and 1st indoors, After this grow, i'll ask questions agin as my outdoor exp. doesn't apply. It takes abit i'm learning to get a grow room to perfect conditions but i'm not folding up camp yet!


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## Rockster (Mar 10, 2009)

Honestly guys,my light leak ruined my entire crop so don't take a cavalier attitude to a 'lil leak' and it wasnt that bad a leak either in that my eyes had to adjust to the darkness for some minutes before I could see it.

 And not from going hermie but extremely reduced resin production.


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## CasualGrower (Mar 10, 2009)

Rockster said:
			
		

> Honestly guys,my light leak ruined my entire crop so don't take a cavalier attitude to a 'lil leak' and it wasnt that bad a leak either in that my eyes had to adjust to the darkness for some minutes before I could see it.
> 
> And not from going hermie but extremely reduced resin production.


 
Not meaning to start an argument, but IF your light leak was so small that you had to stand in your room and wait for your eyes to focus and adjust to see it, I would be willing to bet that there were other factors affecting your resin production than just that leak....  there are DOZENS of factors that could have hurt ya, IE: bad seeds, PH swing at the wrong time, not enough light during late flower when Trichs are being produced, bulb dimming from long usage etc etc.


As I did say before though, IF you find a light leak, and you are growing inside... Fix it....


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## Rockster (Mar 10, 2009)

No,it was down to the light leak,no question.

Seeds were good,all other environmental factors spot on as the room had been used many times before and it was the addition of a next door veg room that gave me this problem.

It's the wise man that learns from the mistakes of others,the fool learns from his own.


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## CasualGrower (Mar 10, 2009)

By 'bad seeds' I did not mean that they weren't viable or would not grow....  I mean it coulda been a case of questionable genetics.... Maybe had the same parentage as the same strain before and experienced some sort of genetic anomaly, who knows....

Maybe that strain was very reactive to the light leak, I do not know../shrug



Again, I say light leaks are not good.


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## Johnnyrotten123 (Mar 10, 2009)

Hey Rockster, sorry if i came across as "cavalier". This is my first grow room and there is some faults. To explain: the only chance at any light getting in is at near sunset and sunrise hours. I'll be dark from 8pm to 8am. I need to fix my ventilation problem and still have a few weeks to do this, thus where a glimmer of light may enter and my heat issue will both be repaired. Both issues though not perfect, i only question how "critical" as the extreme heat(86 to 94f) with a fan blowing, and a screen window bringing in cool, fresh air : my plants r thriving and loving it!! Nows it about time for flowering, so i know i have this possible morning and evening light deal, and its only an hour each way where sume sunset or sunrise type of offlight can enter is why i question.Its not a quick fix either   and not sure how to do it. Not takin your experience lightly-am grateful -ok-JR


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## Lemmongrass (Mar 10, 2009)

Google has kind of tough me that all seeds from kc brains, with a few exceptions here and there under perfectly matched conditions, are crap. very weak genes that are not stabilized, just random offspring crosses almost.


but in the op's case, the fix is so easy for this he needs to do it. my grow room is made with semi translucent plastic so my problem with light was much larger and a pita to fix. 7x7x7 in a 28x7x7 which was connected to another 28x7x7 with no door. the 2nd big room was lit 24hrs a day. unfinished ceiling so light came thru all the spaces between joists, all kind of places. 2 windows, a loose vent slot, and a door with a .5" gap. took me almost a week to plan and do.

all you need to do is hit it with 4$ worth of weather strip.


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## Hick (Mar 11, 2009)

I believe that some strains/pheno' are simply more prone/susceptible to light poisoning than others. I had a friend that had a hermie OD, diagnosed as caused by headlights alternately shining on it as cars turned a nearby corner. Another growe once claimed that "his" bubblegum plant would hermie under moonlight, because it was bred specifically for ID cultivation.. I have had ppl tell me that the LED light from their power striip caused hermies... I personally had a plant that refused to flower properly due to 'ambient' light from an unsealed petition. Just enough light that you could distinguish the silhouette of it against the white wall. "I" thought it was "dark enough"..
     "IMHO"... these are likely extreme cases, and are also likely to be from poor genetics, or hermie tendencies within. IMHO a line 'that' susceptible to hermie probably should not be continued, propogated.


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## Rockster (Mar 11, 2009)

lotek said:
			
		

> Google has kind of tough me that all seeds from kc brains, with a few exceptions here and there under perfectly matched conditions, are crap. very weak genes that are not stabilized, just random offspring crosses almost.
> 
> 
> but in the op's case, the fix is so easy for this he needs to do it. my grow room is made with semi translucent plastic so my problem with light was much larger and a pita to fix. 7x7x7 in a 28x7x7 which was connected to another 28x7x7 with no door. the 2nd big room was lit 24hrs a day. unfinished ceiling so light came thru all the spaces between joists, all kind of places. 2 windows, a loose vent slot, and a door with a .5" gap. took me almost a week to plan and do.
> ...



Lotek,how does someone qualify a statement regarding 'very weak genes that are not stabilised,just random offspring crosses almost' ?

I and many I know have grown various KC strains and they always did what was written on the tin. 

Those Mango beans were fine,used before both inside and out but reacted very badly to a light leak with minimal resin production and continual calyx/pistil production,just lots of plant matter with little resin on it.

Oh,and I've just remembered,a local guy my way grew for the first time this year and refused to take an led off a night time heater and I warned him it might end in tears and oh yes it did,with his Blue Cheese and Red Diesel both going hermy on him with resin production strongly reduced.

@Johnny. Don't apologise mate,you didnt come over that way and maybe I'm coming over a bit strident with me banging on about light leaks but it's only because my direct experience has shown me it can be a right choker,why,I had 15 Mango plants messed up,about a kilo and 14 weeks of time in the bin.The leak was found and fixed,same seed germed and the next crop was cracking quality.

I'm just trying to convince anybody not to be slapdash when it comes to light leaks,just no room in a serious grow for em.

So Johnnyrotten,an hour either side of the light cycle with a slight leak is no biggie,especially as you are in veg atm and about to flower and are going on to fix this shortly so all will be fine.

As an example of how powerful the influence an interrupted dark period can be,in the plant nursery/veg industry some plants are kept in a veg state with 12 hours dark and the light coming on for 15 minutes mid dark period and the plant stays in a vegetative state with much less power used than the 18 normally used.

so,you are aware of the leak and are working to fix it and if the leak during that hour at sunrise/sunset is significant it will appear to the plant to be on a 14 light/10 dark cycle so the plant will flower but the flowering response won't be as marked as 12/12.

You say you are gonna fix your leak/vent problem 'in a few weeks',well ok but I'd really try get it sorted sooner rather than later,shoulda been really done from day one but we don't live in a perfect world do we now?

All the vey best with this,your first grow Johnnyrotten123.:watchplant:


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