S'allright. So here's a quick update (busy day today). I also can't locate my USB cord for my digital camera so I'll have to post the pics later.
I was up until friggin 6am workin on everything, and I'm a little disappointed with the results.
I attached the support for the screen, and it seems okay so far. However, when I was working on it I accidentally abused the hell out of my plants. I ended up bending both the ICE plants (the big ones) at a 90 degree angle for a split second and back up. (power drill + errant piece of wood) All of a sudden I smelled a very pungent plant smell coming from them and I thought I snapped them in half. However, I can't find any breaks or anything so I'm hoping they just got beat up real bad and not critically injured. 10 hours later, there are no signs of imminent death or anything so I'm hoping that it just serves to toughen 'em up even more.
Totally duct taped the reservoir. The difference is like night and day. I never knew how bright it was in there until I got all the light blocked out. Why would a hydro company sell systems that allow so much light to get through?
When I went to clean my res I found that orange crap inside all of the hoses. I had to use pipe cleaners to get it all out. There wasn't anything just in my res itself, it was just the hoses. It's not gritty. It is slimy and chunky, and much like vomit in its consistency and color. (sad but true) So perhaps it is/was some type of barf-like algae caused by high temps and too much light in the res...?
The worst part of the res cleaning: I had to pull the hoses out of the pots in order to clean them out, so after I put the system back together I had to slowly, carefully take the hydroton out of one side of each of the pots in order to get the hoses back in there. I still don't think I did a very good job (it's hard as hell to do with plants/cubes/roots in there) so I'm going to have to keep checking on the little ones to make sure the cubes aren't going dry. The older ones I don't worry about so much as they already have roots in the water.
All in all, the res wasn't dirty or bad at all. Still looked pretty clear after a few weeks. The only orange I found was on/in the hoses...
I also wrapped the water pump up with some charcoal screen door stuff to keep the roots out of it while I was at it.
I tried working on a DIY carbon filter using ductwork for dryers and an activated carbon filter I have. It didn't work very well. It's hard trying to rig something up to my room because there isn't a solid hole to hook something up to. I just have that hole in my tent, so things don't hold up as well. I'm going to have to do some serious work in this department.
I did close those vents in the bottom of the tent with duct tape. I'll probably undo that though, based on the recommendations in this thread. However, those vents also allow some light to escape so I'll have to attend to that as well.
I tried the frozen water bottle in the res trick. Lasted a couple hours...
I tried putting a bunch of ice water in the room with the grow. It lowered temps for a few hours, but it soon rose again. However, all the water has raised the humidity from about 30-35 to 40-45.
Have distilled water in the res now. Addes some PH down again to get it down. Added too much so the PH went to about 4. I decided to wait it out instead of adding any of that Stealth Hydro PH Up I have because that stuff caused some nasty build up in my system the only time I tried to use it. There weren't any nutes in there anyway so I didn't see the problem with letting the PH rise on its own. 10 hours later, the PH is now at about 5, so I think I'm going to add my first batch of nutes today. I'm using the General Hydroponics 3 part. (By the way I'll definitely be switching the GH micro to the GH Hardwater Micro and save myself some money from now on. Thanks a lot for the tip on that, up4anything). I think I'm going to do half the recommended dosage for seedlings, as I'd rather undernute my bigger plants than overnute my younger plants.
So now, all the temps remain where they were despite my best efforts. Ambient temp remains at about 87F. Water temp remains at about 80F. Humidity is up to 45%.
I guess I need to rethink the cooling and odor control. Would something like this:
http://www.htgsupply.com/viewproduct...roductID=52531 work alright or what should I be looking into? As I said, I'm not quite sure how I'll hook up something like that to my room as I just have the pocket/hole in the tent to work with. I also thought that fan I already have in there was pretty good. It's rated at over 100CFM and it's really pushing the air out of the side. I guess if I get a better exhaust like the one I linked to I can move the current one to the intake. I'm sure that will help a lot...
So, as always, any help/suggestions/advice are appreciated. I guess what I'm really wondering right now is what to do about the temperatures and odor control. I just think I should be able to rig something to make that fan I already have work a bit better, as it really does shoot the air out of the box.