chinamon that set up is great I have a similar tent but only 6 X 4ft t-5's running right now as i am only doing some dwc basil and my cashola is limited.. hows the 400 hps working out i am terrible about needing x wanted y and getting z and ending up with over kill i have a 4x4x7 sun hut and would like to do a 600 but think 400 is more than sufficient.. also where did you get your bucket system? i am using a tub that is like long and flat and i have 6 plants on it.. it worked while my basil was young but now i am seeing some difficulties with res. changing and root expantion... any help here would be appriciated.. on the other topic in this thread i see the comment as the "Doh!" remark as mentioned earlier... I am sure we have all made some errors or just random mistakes over thinking or deckin out our gardens... it happens chinamon just happens to have the guts to do it up .. take a pic .. and ask for advice.. i think your system is nice and i don't think youll see much varience in your yields from whiting out everything... the majority of your room is extra reflective and beyond that its a hobby right? peace and info on the buckets would be cool..

Yeah, I was thinking it would be a good idea to lower the light too. The plants can actually touch the tubes without much damage, tho' an inch or two of clearance would be better. As for the cat--I had stopped using the bottom shelf of my light stand because of the cats. My son just put two T-8 fixtures side by side above the bottom shelf (makes the other lights--T12s look kinda dingy!) and I remembered I had some capillary matting (any old acrylic or other 'plastic' blanket will work) and put it on there, and poured hot water on it. Helps humidity, and the cats don't like it. Cats will push plants off when they decide to stretch out and take naps. They will nibble. (My sans, which are starting to bloom, tend to have little tooth marks on the outside leaves.) Some plants are poisonous to cats. Someone I know slightly had her cat drink out of the reservoir under a plant and it took a visit to the vet emergency room to save its life. It never occurred to her the fertilizer in the water was poisonous to cats! (Me either!) I love my plants and I love my cats, and prefer they all stay healthy.

I don't understand the purpose of the drop cloths, and like Larry, I'm concerned about the fire risk. Raising seeds indoors will lose its appeal really fast if your light-shelf set-up burns down the house. Tomato seedlings should be grown on at cool temperatures after the seeds germinate. The ideal temperature for them is 65 degrees. Leaving seedlings on a seed germination mat is risky and can damage them. I have a seed germination mat and rarely use it. If I'd known how easily 95% of the plants I grow from seed would germinate indoors without a germination mat, I never would have bought one. Some years I don't even dig it out of storage and use it at all. When I do use it, I move the entire flat off the mat once 50% of the cells in the 72-cell flat have germinated seeds in them. About the only vegetable seed I'll use the germination heat mat for is pepper seeds, particularly older seeds I've had a few years. I often germinate my tomato, pepper and other seeds in zip-lock bags like George mentioned. As long as I remove them from the zip-lock bag before the plant stems and roots become intertwined with one another, they don't mind being moved from the bags to the flats of soil-less mix. I find it very efficient because I'll have full flats with each cell filled with seedlings, instead of having flats with some empty cells because the seeds in them failed to germinate. I prefer to grow seedlings on for a few weeks in conditions that are fairly cool. Because the guest room where I put my light shelf faces the south and has big windows, I struggle to keep the room from getting too hot for them. To keep it cool, I close off the HVAC vent in that room so that it isn't getting any heat when the heater is on. I let them have a couple of hours of early morning sun and then close the drapes so that the room doesn't heat up too much. I keep a fan running 224/7. When you raise seedlings indoors in a room that is too hot, they quickly grow into monster plants, and that's not good for them. When they grow large quickly, they outgrow the available space under the plant lights. When that happens, what are you going to do with them? I used to move mine to my screened-in back porch, but once we built the greenhouse, that became the place I put them when I kick them out of the nice warm house. They might get warmer in the greenhouse than I'd like during the day, but then they get very close to freezing temperatures in there most nights, so that keeps them from growing rampantly like they would indoors. It is so early to be starting tomato seeds indoors that I get a headache thinking about it. You only need to start them 6 to 8 weeks before your recommended transplanting date. The OSU-recommended planting dates for tomato transplants are April 10-30, with the April 10th date being intended for folks in far SE OK and the April 30th date being intended for folks in far NW OK. The rest of us have to chose an appropriate transplanting date somewhere between April 10 and April 30, based on where we live in the state and on our local soil temperatures and air temperatures. Sometimes, in a really hot winter with an early last freeze, we can put tomato plants in the ground up to a month early and get away with it, but years like that are few and far between---maybe once or twice a decade, and it just happened in 2012, so I don't know if we'll have another year like that any time soon. I usually start my tomato seeds on Super Bowl Sunday, and that can be far too early for me in years when the air and soil temperatures stay cold deep into spring. And, it can be almost too late in a year like 2012 because it means my seedlings will barely be big enough to be transplanted early. So, I feel like it is the exact right time to start them since it isn't precisely right for long, cold springs or short, warm winters. It is right in the middle. If I started tomato seeds as early as you have, my husband would lock me in the cellar until the insane urge to start seeds now had passed. That is because he knows all too well how crazy it makes me to have big, healthy plants indoors that cannot go into the ground for another month or two. Because our weather is so erratic, even when I start them on time, I sometimes cannot put them into the ground for another 2-6 weeks beyond the preferred transplanting date. The last time we had a year like that, it just above drove me crazy, and I just about drove him crazy. So, since you started your seeds so early.....welcome to the insanity! Dawn

I believe your problem isnt so much your lights as its your temperatures and the fact that the plants are right next to a furnace ^^. Im guessing your haworthias don't have a chance to absorb the water that is given to them, top that with extreme dryness and warmth that might be pushing the plant use up its reserves of water causing the sinking leaves syndrome. Transpiration 1) An increased rate of evaporation due to a temperature rise will hasten the loss of water. 2) Decreased relative humidity outside the leaf will increase the water potential gradient. Drier surroundings gives a steeper water potential gradient, and so increases the rate of transpiration. Haworthias IME flourish when days are 60-70 and nights 40-50F. They really appreciate that temperature drop and cool temps. What are your average day and night temps? I think that will be most telling.