Hydro WIlma 4 Pot 1st Try Please Help!

Hi all!! Great to be back after a nice summer...I'm still smoking my last harvest

I decided I need to begin this journal now because it is clear I will need help and reassurance as I go. Please keep an eye on my first step into hydroland.
The pics attached show the Wilma set up. Wierd...and a little worrying! Everywhere else I see drippers that ring around each plant. My system says that I can either flood or drip..depends which medium I choose. I just had to change the nozzle. Thing is it doesn't look like much of a flood!! Oh yes!! Very important: At the moment my timer floods the system for 15 minute intervals four times over 24 hours. Does that sound sensible?

Take a look at the tube I lifted out of the hydroton: the water flows out of the holes at the top of the blue bit and runs down the spines. It gets the bit around it wet, but everywhere else appears to stay dry...makes no difference where in the pot you put it. Nowhere on GC can I find anyone else who has used this system...uh oh!!

Right then:
I germinated four seeds and one died when trying to open. I have another taprooted and in the propogation cubes you can see in the pics. The little seedlings are rooted in the propogation block which I then inserted into a soaked rockwool cube and into the hydroton. There are, of-course, no nutes in the water, but there is some ph up and down in it. Six was my last reading. I'm letting it go just to observe for the moment and also want to avoid putting more ph down in when they are so tiny. I am using tap water with all the chlorine evaporated.

Lighting...Dammit!!! This issue has been a bit frustrating! I've forked out wedge on a cfl for the early stage of growth because I have read and been told that 400W MH is too much for young plants. But there have been problems waiting for missing bits and then the bulb fusing straight away. Now I'm waiting for a replacement and meanwhile I have roast seedlings....! They seem all right, but it's warm. (You can see the temp)

Those are the main issues so far.

My set up:
In line fan with filter
Large desktop fan
PC intake fan
400W MH/HPS
125W cfl (well soon anyway)
Wilma Four Pot System (using hydroton, rockwool) Flood
Ph truncheon...CF truncheon
Canna nutes
Trying 18/6 lighting time for veg.

Oh!!! I'm growing White Russian! again

Please please keep an eye on me and help me if you can. GC was a godsend on my first soil grow!
Any questions?

Here's a picture of the 'flood' in action!

[Help_Needed]

I'm not sure that 15 min every 6 hours is frequent enough. I've heard that hydrotron doesn't hold moisture nearly as well as other mediums. Then again, when I took my two male plants out of my system on of them didn't start to wilt for about 8 hours, and the other lasted over 24. So I could be wrong.

FWIW, my system is a drip system and it uses hydrotron.

This was my worry, but over watering is worse so maybe see how it goes.
(Hey nice to see you here, thanks for stopping!)

[Mr.GoodStuff]

I don't know about overwatering being worse than underwatering, especially in the beginning! And with a hydro setup like a drip system it's a little harder to overwater than in soil. I flood for 15 minutes every 2 hours with lights on and the plants grow great.

Good luck Squidge! Glad to see ya back at it again with a new hydro setup!

AH!!! That's just what I needed thank you so much..wicked!!

More worrying!

I've set up a 125W CFL Blue for the little seedlings you can see and have turned off the roasting 400W MH. Temps are great, I feel a sigh of relief at the likely drop in power consumption (aaaahhhhh), seedlings look healthy...BUT...really...can this be enough light?? I hope so! I've had such a nightmare trying to position the light just right so that the three seedlings showing all get light. It's gonna get a bit complicated when the late seedling emerges cos the others will be ready for more light quite quickly I reckon.

SO....do you think this is enough? Replies would be much appreciated as always.

Oh wow....you know...I wish I'd bought bloody CFLs in the first place!!!! SO much easier to control the environment. I'm still very concerned that it isn't enough light, even for seedlings, but we'll see how it goes for now.

If you have a look at the pics you may notice I've added a pipe! It comes from the intake fan and is tied to the desktop fan. The bit you can't see is that I have linked a pipe to the other side whcih now leads outside. This means there is genuine outside air being pumped gently over my plants (only a little PC fan driving it, but it's enough for a flow of fresh air) aided by being tied onto the desktop fan...all riiiight!!

Fourth seedling has now emerged and I'm burning to stuff it into the rockwool and get that black propogater thing out of the way, but I'll wait...for a bit....

[Mr.GoodStuff]

The more light the better, 82 degrees isn't that bad man. The cfl will be fine for now but you will get the most growth with the 400 when they outgrow that cfl in a couple weeks.

The fresh air system looks good

Thanks Mr. Goodstuff...

82? Yeah not too bad, but that was with the door open. Closed it can go over 90. It's one reason I got some air in from outside as I thought it must help reduce the temps. (It's not cold here, but autumn approaches so it is getting cooler) My fbiggest fear was that those temps and the MH were far too much for little seedlings.

Yes perhaps two weeks at the most with that light...I plan to use it as well as the MH to help any that are slower: I'll prop it up sideways

PS I'm interested in your thoughts on the lighting schedule! Last grow I decided 100% on 24/7 throughout veg, but am now trying 18/6...but then I read in another journal that you say 24/7 for two weeks then 18/6?? And that doesn't confuse the plant?

[urgr8estfear]

I think the choices between 24/7 18/6 or 12/12 are confusing you and not the plant.

Opinions on this differ but if you ask me :

24/7 good for sprouting or seedlings (fluros or CFLs preferred)
18/6 good for vegging (MH preferred)
12/12 good for flowering (HPS preferred)

In my current grow I did 24/7 for seedlings, 18/6 for a bit of vegging, 12/12 for presexing, again 18/6 for more vegging and now finally 12/12 for the real flowering.
Are my plants confused?
Nope, they still 'know' who they are.
Don't worry about hermiefying your plants, it's takes bad genetics in the first place for this to happen, I've seen plants tortured to shits without them going hermie on their grower.
What you do need to look out for is not messing up the 12/12 schedule once you're in it.
This will cause the plants to go into revegging mode and may diminish the final yield if it was unintentional and followed by a quick switch back to 12/12.
This is because switching to 12/12 (or back) causes hormonal shifts in the plants which take a few days to occur.

Sounds good to me! So I've taken the cfl off the timer for now. Thanks Bud!

[mordgrow]

just FYI, 400w HPS isnt too much for young plants

Indeed....tempting..tempting....maybe one weeks time

This is a great quote from Mr. Goodstuff's journal and I'm keeping it for my own referance!

These were the problems this first grow had for the reference of other first timers:

1. Too much veg time.

2. Too crowded.

3. Didn't remove lower, pitiful branches not getting any light.

4. Didn't use side lighting or interior lighting.

5. Used filtered tap water and it messed with our nutrient program's proper ratios of PKN.

6. Used too high of a Ph in flower (5.7-6.3, mostly being over 6.0) -locks out phosphorous and toasted the tops of the Mazar and the whole Blueberry plant.

7. Plants were so tall I couldn't move the light any higher and the tops of large Mazar buds didn't produce at peak because of the heat stress, and curled away from the light.

8. Didn't use airstones in the reservoir which resulted in the death of our lower root system sitting in water with no dissolved oxygen, causing root rot in late flower.

9. Didn't use a carbon filter -BAD IDEA, smelled like crazy it was a huge risk-

10. Didn't feed them long enough and they flushed for 14-21 days.

11. Didn't use fans in flower for anything other than heat dissapation (sp?) and the branches were weak and fell over.

12. Topped way too many times, causes weak branches that need support.

I think that's about it for the problems... But the good thing is- through trail and error I have found the solution to each problem that occured. It's still far from perfect, but is not so n00b this time around!

1. Not veging as long

2. Less plants, more room

3. Removed everything that wasn't robust from the lower parts of the plant, anything below the area of premium light intensity was removed

4. Using side lighting and less crowding allows for more light to penetrate the interior of the plants because all the colas aren't packed in there

5. Got an R/O recently (using it for the first time tonight! YAY! )

6. Using the proper Ph in flower, 5.6-6.0, 5.5 is ok but 6.1 is unacceptable.

7. Much shorter plants this time with air-cooled lights on top of it. (plus more light with better spectrum, electonic ballast and reflector)

8. Just got two double airstones (the longer tube style ones) for the reservoirs, will be increasing the flood times to every 4 hours even at lights off and raising the buckets up an inch using plywood so more water drains out from them.

9. Carbon filter installed and we are about to route the ducting through the attic so we don't have to have the ducting going out the door anymore. When people came over we had to shut the door and the temp would rise plus air exchange was comprimised. With the new 600 it's much worse, 2 hours with the door closed and it was 90 degrees. Solving this problem by this weekend.

10. Will be feeding longer so the strains finish better. I've also heard using hydroton allows you to not need to flush as long, but I will still give them 7 days to flush out regardless.

11. Using a fan to strengthen the stems on the flowering plants and it is working out awesome, the difference is amazing. The stems are like rock hard! Now I don't think we'll need to string the whole garden up this time.

12. Didn't top at all and internodal growth was explosive using just LST, I don't think I will top a plant again unless I am using a screen and need to train the plant in multiple directions to fill the screen. Topping requires a lot of wind training if you don't want weak branches.

I hope this helps people understand the trail and error required in growing- it is an important part of the learning process.


I just finished trimming everything up last night- the first round is finally done! I'll be taking some pictures tonight of everything and making a final picture update tomorrow.

Take care everyone! Grow on!

Give the guy some rep!!!!!