Advantages of using a Grow Tent in your Hydroponics System

There are several advantages of using a grow tent in your hydroponics system. You’re to be congratulated for thinking about using a grow tent, as it indicates that you’re taking this seriously.

Grow tents are useful for all sorts of reasons. Here at Caliponics, we only offer good advice, and that advice is that if you have a choice, it’s far better to use a grow tent than not to use one.

Is it Really Necessary to Use a Grow Tent for Hydroponics?

Well, it isn’t vital in the sense that you will certainly be able to have and use a hydroponics system without a grow tent. But it’s far better to use one than not to use one.

There are several advantages of using a grow tent in your hydroponics system. It’s possible, of course, to grow plants indoors without making use of one. But by using one, you’ll be putting yourself in such an advantageous position that it would be silly not to. The environment you’ll be providing for your crop should be your overriding concern, as you will only get out what you put into it. A grow tent provides stability, safety and efficiency.

Grow Tents are ideal for Beginners

Having a grow tent for your hydroponics system is a sound choice for beginners. It’s very easy to integrate this into the overall design. Having a grow tent is also far easier if you control the environmental aspects such as the temperature, humidity, and overall climate control, which is absolutely crucial to the successful harvest of a crop that is optimum both in quality and quantity. Getting all these things right simultaneously can be difficult for a beginner to achieve; it’s easier to do this by using a grow tent.

For one thing, you’re working within a closed system, so it is easier to control all aspects of the environment within it – far more straightforward than if you were trying to do this in part of a spare room, for example. With doors and windows opening and closing all the time, you’ll find it challenging to maintain the environmental continuity that a good crop demands. Grow tents are the perfect choice for novice hydroponics growers.

A Hydroponic Grow Tent Is Easy to Install

A hydroponic system needs to provide continuity. Preparing this in any old space can be difficult. It can be hard physical work to get everything in place if you do it piecemeal with lots of disparate elements needing to be fitted in exactly the right place and at precisely the correct distance from each other. But with a grow tent, all this is pre-made. Everything is already in the right place. Floors and surfaces are even and waterproof, and the whole thing is also light-proof. Your prefabricated environment is truly a plug-and-play system of its own.

Besides, there are many challenges if you try to set up a grow room without a grow tent. You’d need to line the floor and ceiling, install reflective material on all of these, try and work out the best place to fit the lights, drill holes for those light fittings, the ventilation units, etc.

Simply using a grow tent eliminates all this hassle from your to-do list. Everything is already waterproofed and lined, and it comes with its own highly efficient reflective cladding. All in all, it’s entirely possible even for a complete beginner to set up a grow tent in about twenty minutes.

Grow Tents are Energy Efficient

Grow tents within a hydroponics system are very energy efficient. They’re totally light-proof, thereby conserving that energy and the money spent on it. As a closed system, they provide a very efficient environment where nothing is wasted.

The energy spent on climate control – such as stabilising temperature, and humidity, and cooling the whole system – should be used wisely and with the least amount of leakage. Leakage costs money. Over time, this all adds up.

Because a grow tent can be totally light-proof, it’s far more sensible to use them than not to use them. Grow tents are much more efficient with light than a standard grow room setup. Every bit of light is made use of, and nothing is wasted. This provides for the optimum crop yield as well as saving you money.

Due to its inherently efficient reflector fittings, a grow tent makes the most of the reflected light. When your grow lighting is switched on, it can reflect the light throughout the inside, ensuring an optimum distribution of light energy to grow the plants.

A Hydroponics Grow Tent Is Very Versatile

Grow tents can be relocated easily and re-established just about anywhere, unlike a room or outside in the garden. Grow tents can be assembled easily; their material is very hard-wearing and tough; this durability will ensure that it lasts for years. You can think of it as a mobile grow room in a way.

Grow Tents are great for Pest Control.

The grow tent is totally sealed, making things impossible for parasites and pests. They won’t be able to invade your growing space and cause the kind of havoc that they do in typical soil environments because they are literally sealed out. So you won’t be bothered by these little creatures’ diseases.

Insect infestations can blight many gardens and outdoor growing areas. Flies, aphids and spider mites are only some of these. Grow tents, having a completely enclosed design, safeguard your plants from all of these. However, you should not become complacent, especially if you have a garden as well. You need to take precautions not to bring in any of the soil or causes of infestations from your garden into the grow tent itself. It will look after its own interests; you must look out to prevent any possible communication between the two.

Spider mites, in particular, are very detrimental to any growing environment. Because of the way they can double in number every day, they can become a real problem very quickly. They can easily get into your plants’ buds if you give them half a chance. Because it is sealed in the way it is, a grow tent will be impervious to such mites; experienced growers will agree that a grow tent is an excellent way of keeping infestations out.

A Hydroponics Grow Tent Prevents Strong Tell-Tale Smells

If you’re growing certain types of very pungent species, you will have an issue with the smell. But with a grow tent, you can keep the problem of the smell of it down to a minimum. Grow tents are totally airtight; they can have fixtures that extractor fans can easily attach to or some kind of filter. With such equipment, easily fitted within the pre-existing structure, grow tents can eliminate the strong and distinctive smell these plants produce.

Air circulation tends to be handled well within a grow tent. Fresh air is brought into the plants, which contains the carbon dioxide necessary for them to flourish. Carbon filter units can also be attached to the venting system in your tent.
The whole system brings in the carbon dioxide from outside to each plant, and the carbon filter can be set up to remove the smell from the gases leaving the grow tent. This method is also very good at maintaining a steady, healthy pressure inside the tent. From the point of view of the plants, this is a great solution; from the point of view of your neighbours, you won’t be getting any complaints!

Grow Tents can provide for different Growth Stages

Your plants will have different growing stages. Some tents provide several sealed compartments within them which are separated from each other, and you can use these to helpfully grow your plants when they are at different stages of their growth cycle.

You can grow plants at the start of the cycle in the same grow tent as the plants beginning to flower. It’s all to do with efficiency and convenience, enabling you to produce a really healthy crop without hard work.

So those are the main reasons for using a grow tent as a central part of your hydroponics plan. Of course, individual people may find that other good reasons, including their own personal preferences, haven’t been mentioned here once they get underway.

It should be said that there are a couple of drawbacks to using grow tents. These are only minor drawbacks, but you should at least be aware of them.

If you have reason to be growing hundreds of plants (this rules out the beginner here, let’s safely assume), then you will want more space than is afforded by a grow tent. Also, you may consider that a tent with an interior of four feet square is quite tricky to move around in. But that’s it.

All in all, then, the advantages of using a grow tent in your hydroponics system far outweigh the negatives. Indeed, as far as the beginner grower is concerned, a grow tent offers everything that you would probably be looking for at this stage.