1st Time Grow Hydro/Scr0G/ICE/T5

[DarthHerbage]

I'll put up pics when I get a chance, but I'm going to go ahead and start the journal.

Plants: 4 ICE seeds, not feminized or cloned so it may end up being 1-4 plants (3 are in the system, one of the three are sprouting, the other two I think are on their way, also have 2 more germing so I can fill the other spot)

Grow space: 4 x 2 x 4 feet (homebox clonebox) inside of a 5 foot wide, 7 foot high, 2 foot deep closet

Intake: 130mm computer fan (only 50 cfm or so)

Exhaust: 120mm variable speed 100 cfm computer fan

Light: 3 3/4th feet long, Full-spectrum 18000 lumen 234 watt T5 that I will be using for both veg and bloom

Method of growing: Hydroponic with one of those little Stealth Bubbleponics kits (I'm just using this thing for my first 1 or 2 grows, I will be building my own system once I get some experience) So there are 6 netpots in a 6 gallon reservoir. I will only be using the 4 netpots on the outside corners. I am using the water pump that came with it with hoses leading to the netpots. I have 2 on each of the pots in the back, and 1 in each of the front (I'll see how big of a difference it makes). For the medium, I'm using PH soaked rockwool cubes and hydroton. I put 2 12 inch airstone wands in the reservoir with a whisper air pump running to it.

Other: I want to do some LST and make it a ScrOG in order to fully utilize my grow space and light, for the LST I will be using either some 12 inch pipe cleaners or something else I have laying around the house designed for holding plants up. I'm thinking of taping some styrofoam to the side of the system and poking the pipe cleaner(s) in for support. That way I can move them around, and eventually just take the styrofoam off.

Nutrients: I will be using GH micro, bloom, and grow. I also have some superthrive and some flora kleen.

Meters: I have a cheapo Hannah PH tester and a cheapo HM TDS and temp meter (all with calibration fluids and being kept in fluids so as not to dry out)

Smell: I have a huge activated carbon filter that I will eventually DIY with the exhaust fan, and I also have a small closet Ionizer/deodorizer on the way

Odds and ends: I have an oscillating fan in the box, a thermometer/hygrometer (whatever a humidity gauge is called) inside the box...


Already dealt with problems:

1. At first I tried germinating in the rockwool cubes, but it didn't take. I think what happened was that I put the hoses on the sides of the rockwool cubes and they were pretty much drenched and ended up waterlogging the seeds. I have since yanked those seeds (which still aren't germing via the paper towel method after at least 10 days) and switched to new rockwool cubes.

2. PH was off in my water so I tried using GH's PH down and Stealth Hydro's PH up to get it to 5.7ish. Well, I will never again use anything other than liquid in my reservoir (SH's PH up is a powder). The day after I put it in there I had white gunk on my rockwool cubes, hoses, res, etc. I yanked everything out, washed everything, rinsed everything, and switched out the cubes. Never again.

Possible problems in the future:

1. Temperature: It seems to stay around 85 - 93 F in my growbox and I'm not exactly sure what to do about it. I do have an oscillating fan inside the box, but the temperature needs to go down a little bit. I'm wondering if I can put some dryer ducting leading up to my intake fan and putting an icepack in it will help (switching out the icepack of course) I have no budget to buy any more/bigger fans

2. Smell: I'm just hoping I can rig a DIY carbon scrubber type thing and the little ionizer I buy will take care of this

3. Dang sprouts still have the seeds attached to the ends. At what point do I try to tweezer the seed casing off 'em?

Current issues:

1. I think I've got pretty much everything I need except for finding a way to build the support for the screen. I have screen itself, but I need to figure out a cheap, somewhat easy way to rig it to the top of the bubbleponics system.

Here are the dimensions of the system:

Length: 20.5 inches
Width: 14.125 inches
Height: 12.5 inches

I'd like to make the screen (I can cut it any size) at least 3 feet wide and 18 inches deep. I've read some methods of building your own ScrOG set up and have seen some pictures (modular setups etc.), but I haven't seen anything that starts with such a small base to support such a big screen.

I don't have much moolah to throw at this part of the grow, and am also not a handyman. I have a power drill, a hammer, some nails, some wire clothes hangers, and the regular stuff you could imagine laying around the house.

I think I'm going to go see if I can find some cheap lumber to build a wooden frame for the screen and find a way to attach it to the lid.





This concludes the first chapter of my grow journal. As far as the 3 seeds in the system go, I'd say

1 is abot 3 days old, but is having issues. I tried shifting her around (probably not a good idea)

The 2 others are 2 days old, of which 1 is almost an inch and a half out of the rockwool cube (WOO HOO), the other I think is on its way

I have 2 more ICE seeds germing and I'm sure one will pop so I can make it my 4th.



I will post pics as soon as I can.

[DarthHerbage]

I'm not sure how to put the uploaded pics in the middle of this post (I know how to do it with the usual image hosting sites, but I'm not using one for this). So, what I'll do is give a breakdown:

1st pic: Open up one side of the closet and BAM! Growbox!

2nd pic: Bottom right side of the box. Think I should yank the power strip through the hole and seal it off around the cords to lessen the whole "fire hazard" thing?

3rd pic: Top right side of growbox. That's the exhaust fan.

4th pic: Middle of the box, res, light, etc.

5th pic: Bottom left of the box w/oscillating fan. You can't see it but behind that fan in the back bottom left of the box is the hole for the intake fan.

6th pic: Blurry pic of the back right baby. That was the first one to make it into the system, but I think I screwed up with it. After a day I saw some green in the cube so I looked in and it seemed as if it was having problems with the seed casing. So I took some tweezers and fiddled with it a bit (n00b ftw!1) and I think I dislocated it from its little root. So, my last ditch effort was to grab the green baby stem and stand it up in the rockwool to see if it will grow its own roots. Yeah, it's probably a goner.

7th pic: Front left plant. It's in there pushing that seed casing up. There's a noticeable difference from yesterday.

8th pic: So far my pride and joy lol. It's pushing on up there. (looks like I was pretty generous with my height estimate in my first post on this one). As you can see, it's still got the seed casing attached as well. What's up with that?

9th pic: Overview of system.

10th pic: DIY intake fan on left bottom side of grow box.

S'allright. Any comments/advice/flaming is appreciated.

For the record, the back right is about 3 days now, the other 2 just 2 days.

Temperature is about 87F and humidity 35ish.

[DarthHerbage]

Forgot to mention, I added 1 1/2 teaspoons of SuperThrive to the 6 gallons of PH'd water in the res. Heard it was good for strengthening roots, so it will travel to the undersides of the rockwool cubes via the water hoses.

[THesCientist]

Nice man, I'm liking the setup.

[DarthHerbage]

Originally Posted by THesCientist

Nice man, I'm liking the setup.

Hey thanks mane. I noticed you've got one going. I'll give it a look and tell ya what I think.

[RobsGreen]

Looking good, can't wait to watch them grow! You might want to raise the power bar above water level, a fire would really suck.

[DarthHerbage]

Originally Posted by RobsGreen

Looking good, can't wait to watch them grow! You might want to raise the power bar above water level, a fire would really suck.

Yeah, I was thinking about just pushing it out that vent hole the cords are coming from then closing it around the wires, putting it outside the room. A lot less dangerous I'm thinking.

Anyhow, I'm having one hell of a time just getting some beans to germ.

I have two actual plants going now. One about 2 weeks old (I think...I should really figure up the dates before it gets too late for me to remember)...and one about one week old. Other than those two I haven't been able to get the other 8 ICE seeds to crack. I tried 5 freebie seeds and a couple bag seeds first, germing them in the rockwool...didn't work.

With these ICE I tried the normal method that has worked for me which is wet paper towel + ziplock bag + kitchen cabinet. My oldest plant is from that batch.

I tried wet washrag + ziplock bag + on top of my router. My 2nd plant is from that batch. However, I have already tossed 3 seeds, and after trying the router, washrag, ziplock bag trick on the 5 I have left I just said to hell with it today and planted 3 in one of the rockwools in the system, and 2 in the other one. Damn it one of those things should sprout.

Seem to be having a problem with the system. Using General Hydroponics PH down has seemed to cause a little orange gunk to build up on at least one of the water hoses going from the pump to one of the cups. I just tossed 5 teaspoons of GH Hydro Clean in there and am going to dump the water and start over tonight.

I don't have my camera right now but will post pics tomorrow or the next day. The two that are growing (this is the farthest I've gotten before) are looking good from what I can tell. I burnt the first one a bit by keeping the T5 too close (heat) but it's bounced back nicely. It just has a little brown on the edges of its first leaves and a little on the next set. The 2nd plant is looking good too. They have a lot of sets of leaves already at only a few inches height...hard to explain but I'll post pics tomorrow or the next day. I just wish I could get these other ones germing. I know if I only grow these two they'll both end up male.

Anyone have any idea what GH PH down would cause some orange gunk? Is there a trick to adding it?

Anyhow, just an update.

[DarthHerbage]

So here are the pics of my two growing plants. (nothing else will germ, damn it)

1st pic is of the setup, group photo

2nd and 3rd pic are of my first plant. I think it's at around 2 1/2 weeks right now... The brown/orange you see is from keeping the T5 too close at the beginning.

The rest of the pics are from my 2nd plant. It's at around 1 1/2 weeks right now. If you notice, there's some orange tinging going on. I believe that's because in the particular pot it's in, the hose is having trouble wetting the whole rockwool cube so it started to dry up. (Correct me if I'm wrong people)

So I've started top watering that cube when it starts to get dry.

Again, I have no idea why I can't get any of the other seeds to germ. I have 3 seeds in one of the rockwool cubes, and 2 in another. I'm hoping a couple of those will want to sprout. If not, I'm going to try germing a couple Crystal seeds to fill out the 4 positions of the kit. Problem with that is the age difference between the plants. I'll be LST'ing so the height difference shouldn't be too big a deal, but I need to get the other 2 started so the timing isn't too far off for nutes/the switch over/etc.



Any suggestions/comments/advice is appreciated.

[DarthHerbage]

Bump.

Just hopin to get opinions on the health of these two. This is the farthest I've ever got with growing.

Thanks.

[THesCientist]

Looks good to me. My plants are lighter green for the first 30 days or so too. I'm still not sure why that is, but it happens every hydro grow I've done.

So far so good.

-tS

[DarthHerbage]

Thanks for the reply, man. You've got some crazy stuff going on in your grow lol.

So I tried germing 2 Aurora B seeds from a different place than I got the ICE, and one of them has already sprouted a root within a day and a half. Kind of makes me think my germination issues might have more to do with those ICE seeds than my techniques.

So, for those that are counting:

5 "free" seeds from marijuana-seeds.nl germed inside hydro system: 0% success (after 2 weeks)

10 ICE seeds from marijuana-seeds.nl: 20% success (after 2 weeks)

2 Aurora B seeds from WWMS: 50% in 2 days (so far)




Started LST'ing my oldest plant. Within 12 hours a couple lower leaves started to brown a bit. I'm assuming it was stress-induced, (how the hell would I know?), but I'm going to let her fight through it. Due to my height restrictions, LST and ScrOG are of the utmost importance.

I'll be building my screen this weekend. I think I'm going to attach a base to the system and attach the rest later on, so it doesn't affect the height of my light or anything.

Other than that, I'm hoping the fact that I'm going to be late starting nutes (so I don't hurt the newbies I'm trying to get started this week) doesn't impair my older girls.

I'll take more pics this weekend, as the two are growing fast and I'm hoping for a noticeable difference from LST. I'll also be dumping the res and starting fresh with PH'd distilled water this weekend as well.

[2picks]

how are you germinating the seeds.

[DarthHerbage]

I've tried 3 or 4 different methods.

At first I tried germinating them in the system. That didn't work at all.

Then I tried the regular "wet paper towels/zip loc bag/warm dark place" method. I had a couple successful germs from this method, but only 1 became a plant after being in the system.

Then I tried the "drop seeds in a cup of water and then transfer to system" method. I had maybe 1 or 2 successful germs from this method, but none became a plant after being in the system.

Then I tried using a wet rag in a zip loc bag on top of my router. I only had 1 successful germ and it did become a plant in my system.

Now I'm doing wet paper towels inside a tupperware container in a warm dark place with these new seeds and one has already successfully germed after only a day and half. It got transplanted into the system today.

[SmknVTEC]

Nice setup. Besides the superthrive, have you fed them yet? What is the pH, and PPM?

[DarthHerbage]

Well, I haven't given them any nutes yet as I'm trying to get 2 more sprouted in the other two pots to fill it out and give me more chances for females. I figured it'd be better to deprive the ones that are in there than to hurt the fragile young'un's I'll be trying to get started. Is that not a good idea?

So, no nutes yet and no Superthrive since that one time.

The PPM is high but that's mostly because of the obnoxiously hard water I have. This weekend I'm going to dump the res and use distilled water and nothing else for the rest of the grow.

The PPM is about 175.

The PH is about 5.9.

I'd try to get the PH down a bit more but since I wasn't using nutes yet I didn't think it would matter. Should I go ahead and try to get it to sit at...what's the ideal PH for hydro? 5.6?

I don't want to get ahead of myself but I think the Aurora B I transplanted yesterday is already stirring.



The bad news: It looks like the orange gunk that I attributed to using General Hydroponics PH Down is back on a couple of my hoses. If anyone can tell me what the hell is going on I'd appreciate it. I thought GH PH Down was recommended, and I can't think of anything else that would be leaving orange gunk in my res...