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Grow Tent Advice

Hi All!

Today I was planning on pulling the trigger on a cheap grow tent before the winter weather kicks in. Even in the summer, I grow most of my plants indoors because my patio is too shaded and the deer keep eating stuff! :)censor:) Anyways, I've run into some issues that I hadn't accounted for and so I thought it best to see if I can get some advice. Not to mention, some of the more critical reviews for the tents that I'm looking at are off-putting (leakage, broken zippers, size misrepresentation, etc.). But, since I'm going cheap, this is probably unavoidable and I'll just have to make the best of it.

I am going for just a general tropical setup--warm and high humidity, nothing super specific, but I'm hoping to keep some succulents in there as well since I have nowhere else to keep them over the winter. I did a couple searches and saw some setups that were posted in the past here, but I am hoping to see what some people's current setups look like and if there are any things that I need to account for that I might have missed. Like how do you keep it from leaking or keep the leaks from ruining the floor? I am intending to have this in my apartment bedroom, so there's carpet that I need to protect.

I'm thinking if I just get a waterproof rug to set it on top of that it might be okay. Maybe I can put something between the waterproof rug and the tent to raise it up so that air can flow underneath it and dry it out.

I have two 4ft T5 lights (these) that I'm intending to hang in there somehow. I was thinking I'd get some sort of cheap shelving to put inside of it and mount the lights to that. I'm planning to improvise that part when I get the actual tent since many of them seem to have the same "empty" setup.

I've narrowed it down to these two on amazon, but I'm absolutely open to other suggestions:

VIVOSUN

APOLLO

I'm leaning towards the VIVOSUN one mostly because the warranty is better and their customer service looks good too. Most everything else is identical.

What do you guys think and do you have any suggestions? Anything else I've missed when considering a grow tent in a carpeted room in a small apartment?
 
I recently got a grow tent too. I'll say that they definitely get noticeably warmer and more humid than the rest of the room, at least while lights are running. I don't think you'd be able to put the tent on risers because most have the bottom be connected to everything else. I will say that you should go for a pretty large size. It gets hard to maneuver inside the tent once it fills with plants.
 
I recently got a grow tent too. I'll say that they definitely get noticeably warmer and more humid than the rest of the room, at least while lights are running. I don't think you'd be able to put the tent on risers because most have the bottom be connected to everything else. I will say that you should go for a pretty large size. It gets hard to maneuver inside the tent once it fills with plants.
Yeah, I assumed it would get pretty warm since the T5s do give off some heat. That's what I wanted though, my room is always pretty cool and in the winter, it can get into the 60s (not by my choice). Can you share which brand you went with? I'm pretty limited to the sizes I linked to for the time being because I need to keep it in my room. I was originally going for a 2ft one instead of 4, but it seemed like a waste since the prices are close and I have more 4ft lights than 2, which I'm not even able to use anyways.

Did you have any problems with leaking or anything so far? Easy to install lights and stuff?

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 
https://www.amazon.com/Growtent-Gar...&qid=1536628491&sr=8-5&keywords=5x5+grow+tent

This is the one I bought. Reasonably high quality. The extra foot made it a lot easier to maneuver my shelves into it. There haven't been any leaks so far but I've also not spilled anything so far.

I don't think I have room for one quite that big, so I bit the bullet and went with the VIVOSUN one. I also bought a black waterproof tarp to put underneath it. I don't think the issue is spilling things as much as it is the water condensing on the sides and sliding down in between the tray and the floor, and the floor is NOT waterproof on these things. Here's to hoping that I can fit some shelving into it. I could actually probably just get away with setting everything up on the floor of it for now. I don't have that much. But I would like to put a rack in there for the future. I tend to do a lot of stuff with seeds, and I want to be able to grow bigger stuff, like neps.

Thanks for the help!
 
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