Going on vacation - minimum hours under lights?

[luvinthemountains]

I will be going on a vacation soon and will be away from my plants for five days. All the tropicals have just gone into a 96 cu ft grow tent with roughly 350 watts of full spectrum LED's. This will be my first cold season with this setup.

I plan on leaving the exhaust fan off the entire time, to keep humidity at maximum levels. I also plan on setting the light timer to limit the amount of time the lights are on. With 18 hours on, I have been having to water every day (with the exhaust fan keeping humidity at 50%-70% and temperature at 80F-90F).

So my question is, without ventilation what is the minimum number of hours light that my plants (ficus and bougainvillea) could survive on? Clearly the less time the lights are on, the lower the temperature will be and therefore transpiration as well. Not to mention humidity will increase even further with lower temps. But I do not want the trees to overly suffer for lack of light. I am thinking I can increase the hours slightly if I alternate one hour on/one hour off during the day. Thoughts?

 

[leatherback]

Ficus and bougainville get no additional light in my house. They live on 7 hours of light in winter.

 

[JudyB]

Perhaps you should think about wrapping the pots instead of lowering too much the light. I have left indoor plants wrapped as if I was shipping them for as much as 10 days without problems. I use shredded newspaper on the top of the soil and then wrap in saran wrap and alum foil over that.

 

[penumbra]

Perhaps you should think about wrapping the pots instead of lowering too much the light. I have left indoor plants wrapped as if I was shipping them for as much as 10 days without problems. I use shredded newspaper on the top of the soil and then wrap in saran wrap and alum foil over that.

Sounds like a good quick temporary fix that requires little time and investment.
I use the wicking system in my tent and if I need to leave the fan off for any reason, I zip the door part way down. It still stays over 70% humidity.