Hey yall I’m building a small box that I’m thinking I’ll use for small breeding experiments. I’d like to put it in the basement with my other boxes, but I’m worried pollen will escape the filter and wreck my other stuff. Will a carbon scrubber effectively remove pollen?
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I wouldn’t even use a fan if that’s the case. Why even spread the pollen in the first place. Also I’d put a HEPA filter on the other box’s intakes. But really I’d just use a closet.
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This is a small one I bought from a company that went out of business shortly after lol…I haven’t tried it yet. It does make sense that a working scrubber would remove pollen if it’s capturing dust and other stuff.
@Skiball I never even considered not using a fan, I just always have. I’m thinking probably closet though ya it’s just too risky
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I haven’t done a detailed study, but I run males in a tent that has a carbon filter with a fabric “sock” that goes over it. Mostly the sock catches all the pollen. Unpollinated females in a neighboring tent stay unpollinated, so I think it does a pretty decent job.
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Also you can always paint pollen on individual buds. Or use the pollen in a baggie shake n bake method. Or dust the females in a separate room put em on quarantine for a couple days spraying them with water a couple times. You can grow a male in a solo cup n still get plenty of pollen.
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YMMV but I ran into serious issues in my small box I was running males in because of humidity!
I had 3 - 1 gallon pots going and the amount of moisture via transpiration and evaporation from the soil was nuts… I didn’t think it would as much of an issue but plant health declined severely (like dying, not just hurting) within a week or 2. As soon as I popped a fan in all was good.
Now I did have a baseboard heater running in there to maintain temp as well as it’s in my garage.
Now it was a small box (maybe 12 ft3) - but I was shocked at how quickly the plants suffered.
Never had an issue with pollen going from my box to my tent (which is about 6’ away).
Again YMMV…
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Huh that’s weird, did you have ventilation going? This small fan and scrubber I have should exchange the box pretty readily.
@lefthandseeds @Skiball thanks 
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I had zero ventilation. That was the issue.
4” muffin fan and all was solved - no filtration.
Sorry I see that was missing from my post above - and that was my key point 
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where does the fan exhaust to? if you maintain negative pressure and exhaust outside you should be good but your venting will be filled with pollen
for doing small breeding i would carefully collect pollen and selectively pollinate branches, this guy does it in an open flower room without accidental pollination of his other girls
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It would vent into the room that all my other boxes take their air from, so no bueno! I’ve pollinated a couple plants with collected pollen and a paint brush…I wasn’t careful about it AT ALL and still didn’t get any strays luckily
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you’d need a hepa filter over your exhaust port… this is my dilemma as well, i also want to build something for micro breeding, i think i’ll just end up keeping it in my living room or something… are you going to post your build progress in here?
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Well it’s just going to be a pretty basic growbox made of wood, and I am not much of a carpenter haha…but I’ll put a few pics up in my thread as I progress with it
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A HEPA filter will be a significant pressure drop for your fan to overcome - a lot more than the typical centrifugal fan for a grow setup is designed for.
I see pollen ranges from 10-60 microns in size - with that in mind a standard 2” MERV 8 filter would likely prevent 70% or more of the smallest pollen grains to get through (this is a 3-10 micron filter).
You could likely go to a MERV 11 filter and be safe - with much less pressure drop for your fan to overcome.
My .02
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