First Grow - Hydro Set-Up PICS!!!

[HydroFarmer72]

Well, I am a newby...and pretty new to GC. I have found GC and the people on it to be a tremendous help. So, in an attempt to thank everyone, I am posting a grow journal to perhaps help other newbies or to invite comments and suggestions on my grow.

Here is the set up:

Homemade grow box - Total cost of about $40
Stealth Hydro Bubbleponics set up - about $200
System has 6 - 3" net pots fed by a submersible pump
Air stone in the resevoir to help feed O2 to my babies
2 - Dual Spectrum CFLs - I am please with them thus far
2 - 18" Fluro grow lights from Wally World to help on the sides (lower branches)
Small fan
Nutes came with the Hydro Kit - Brand Unkown (Micro, Grow, and Bloom)
I have an ionizer that pulls air through the cabinet and exhausts clean air
My plants are Northern Lights grown from seeds

I am 26 days into the grow. Complete water and nute change yesterday. At their current size, they are drinking the resevoir in about 1 week. I plan on going into Flowering 12/12 within the next week.

I germinated 6 seeds, and all seeds popped.
14 days into the grow, I had little nute burn, but corrected and the plants seem to have done fine. I lost a few of the bottom leaves, but the plants are looking great now.

I seem to be having some issues uploading pictures due to posting them on other threads (when I needed advice). I will try to keep updated photos coming.

Ok, I just went and took some more pics. The pics with my hand in it are from minutes ago. The yellow color is some of the photos is just the CFL...the plants are consistently green throughout.

Please feel free to comment. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!!...and happy toking!!!

[doob3r]

nice, keep us posted dude

[HydroFarmer72]

The past few days my plants have been growing very quickly. I thought it would be closer to the end of this week when I put them into flowering, but I have gone ahead and pulled the trigger.

All of the plants are looking very healthy and I am anxious to see how many girls are in the bunch. Knock on wood....would love 6 out of 6...we'll see.

I did a 1/2 dose of micro and 1/2 dose of bloom after cleaning the system and adding new water. PH is at 5.75. Temp is about 80 during the light phase and humidity has been around 62%. I would prefer the humidity to be a little lower, but with my setup, this is the best I can get...good thing is that it is consistent.

I have read a lot about Northern Lights, and I think I should be flowering for about 7 weeks. If anyone is familiar with growing NL, please share your experiences with me. It would be greatly appreciated. I am curious as to what to expect during flowering.

Here are a few pics from today....

[BioloGyMaJor]

No lst, or SCROG?

Did ya top?



what lights?

[HydroFarmer72]

Since I am a newby to this, I have kept it very simple on this grow. I am not attempting LST or ScrOG. Although they may not be too hard...I have enough to handle with my current 1st grow. I would have to read more about the benefits of each of these before I try them.

I read that in many cases, there isn't a need to top the plants. What is your take on this? If I top them, what benefit will I get....and, could it cause any problems?

Thanks for your input!

[BioloGyMaJor]

topping is the key to having a sexy plant. there are multiple positive factors of topping etc: more budsites, better light balance on lower nodes, to take a clone, to make your plant bushier, those are just a few. there is a good sticky on gc look it up.
it will tell you step by step how to top and where to top.


never top during flowering



happy gardening,
TeXas

[doob3r]

as long as the topping is done by the first wek of flowering you will be just fine

[screwdababylon!]

peace

yeah u can try it
and it looks like the bigger plants supress the smaller ones
i would defenetly do some LST to move em and give some space for the babys
dont let this fuckers to put those fan leaves on em o they wont get light and u wont get shit

all good so far tho
good luck!

[wizknob]

Yo Farmer - Hope all is going well, mine isnt going as well as id like, how long did it take after germinating for your plants to be like 4 inches tall? Im trying to figure out weather or not mine or going slow or normal. My tallest one isnt about 3 inches tall but a couple of the leaves on top are getting really light colored, not sure whats causing it. Maybe too much heat, i cant seem to get the temp down steady below 90, it seems to be the heat from the lights, maybe i have them too close, i was under the assumption i could get them real close, but i have a fan blowing right on the lights and they keep pushing out heat. How high up where your lights from the plants when they were still real young like mine? Lets see some new pics!

[thosevacanteyes]

Great start.

I ordered the exact same setup after looking at the stealth setup.

I paid around $50 shipped for everything. From the looks of things I am going to be very pleased with my purchase. I am new to hydro growing so this thread is mighty helpful.

Keep updating please.

(here is a link to the product I bought, ebay for the win. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWN:IT&ih=023)

-C

[DarthHerbage]

I thought I replied here, but I must've been baked or something.

I'm a first time grower in week 5 of flowering with the SH Bubbleponics set-up. Here's my advice from another thread:

Originally Posted by DarthHerbage

Couple things about the SH Bubbleponics set up:

It's impossible to have 6 full grown healthy plants in that small of a reservoir. I believe the usual water to plant ration should be at least 3-5 gallons per plant. So you can either try a sea of green technique in which the root systems don't get large enough to need as much water and space as full grown plants, or you're looking at a maximum 2 or 3 mature plants.

LIGHT GETS INTO THE RESERVOIR!!! I have no idea why SH sells see-through reservoirs, but you're going to need to tape mylar all over that thing, or put 3 or 4 layers of duct tape on it. I didn't know that at first, and light getting into the reservoir caused orange algae in my system.

I hope you rinsed the hydroton for a long time, because it will cause some orange sediment in the reservoir as well.

There's really no need (in my limited experience) to start nutes until the plants are a couple weeks old. I've learned (again, in my limited experience) that plants with no nutes or less nutes is definitely preferable to plants with too much nutes.

Using this bubbleponics system, I had explosive root growth. However, my roots ended up turning orange, and I'm dealing with root rot. I've tripled wrapped my reservoir with duct tape, and am trying to keep the water temperatures down (65F is where you want it), but no matter what I do I keep having root issues.

Hopefully if you start out making that thing light proof and finding a way to keep your reservoir temperatures down (anything over 75F is asking for trouble) you'll be able to get a leg up on the problems I had.

And you want your ambient temperature to be around 75-82F. Anything in the 90's stunts plant growth unless you have some kind of C02 system in there.

Just my 2 cents. Good luck.

[AugustWest]

Originally Posted by BioloGyMaJor

topping is the key to having a sexy plant. there are multiple positive factors of topping etc: more budsites, better light balance on lower nodes, to take a clone, to make your plant bushier, those are just a few. there is a good sticky on gc look it up.

some strains don't do well with topping. Personally i wouldn't call it the "key" to growing a plant but that's just my opinion. There are other methods you can use to get more budsites and better light balance without having to cut the top of your plant off.

HydroFarmer72: your first grow looks superb dude! welcome to GC

[HydroFarmer72]

Originally Posted by wizknob

Yo Farmer - Hope all is going well, mine isnt going as well as id like, how long did it take after germinating for your plants to be like 4 inches tall? Im trying to figure out weather or not mine or going slow or normal. My tallest one isnt about 3 inches tall but a couple of the leaves on top are getting really light colored, not sure whats causing it. Maybe too much heat, i cant seem to get the temp down steady below 90, it seems to be the heat from the lights, maybe i have them too close, i was under the assumption i could get them real close, but i have a fan blowing right on the lights and they keep pushing out heat. How high up where your lights from the plants when they were still real young like mine? Lets see some new pics!

My plants actually started out very quickly. The plants were about 4 inches within a week. The little leaves that first sprout didn't get really green. Once the fan leaves started to sprout, the plants just took off.

If you are using the CFLs, once your have the little fan leaves started, I would put the lights within about 2 inches or so. Although you don't want to promote stretch, you don't want to burn the fragile leaves. Once the fan leaves start to bush out, you can put the lights very close..about an inch.

This set up, along with the half-rate nutes they gave me, makes nute burn very easy. About 1/4 strength is all you need on the nutes. Keep a close eye out for this. There are a lot of postings around the internet about troubleshooting nutrient issues. They are invaluable.

I am now a week into flowering. The plants are taking off like crazy and I am keeping a close eye out looking for the sex of the plants. The largest of the plants is overwhelming the box, so at this stage, it looks like I am going to have to try LST. I had trimmed a few of the fan leaves, but I really don't like chopping on the plants. Because my set-up isn't traditional LST friendly right now (nowhere to tie off), I may try some small weights on strings to keep some of the larger, top leaves out of the way. I definately can see some of my smaller plants suffering.

My next grow, I am either going to start with LST or try ScrOG. I have some "Mango" seeds that were thrown in for free with my Northern Lights. I am anxious to try them out.

All in all, I am happy with the hydro set up. Being my first grow, it has been relatively easy. A few tweaks on my next grow should really help to perfect things. I have tried to do this as inexpensively as possible therefore I dont' have fancy lighting, odor control, or the type of air flow that I would like. I will certainly add a few of these items the next time around.

Keep giving me your intput GC! I am going to post more pics once I do a little LST today. And of course, once I harvest....I will let you know how it turned out (anxious to take a puff).

[HydroFarmer72]

Here are some pics I just took. I went ahead a tied two of the plants back using some string a a couple of sockets for weights since I don't have any tie down points. It looks a little shaggy with them pulled out of the way, but hopefully it helps the smaller plants out.

One of the plants has little white hairs developing at the bud site...no bannanas as of yet. Pray for girls!!!

Let me know what you think! Thanks for looking at my grow journal.

***Please note that the yellow color on the leaves is from one of the lights. The leaves are all a nice dark green throughout the SOG.

[wizknob]

Look sexy Farmer, nice work. I hope in a few weeks my grow box looks something like yours! You said your first few leaves wernt green? Ive finally gotten my temp/humidity under control, but i feel like I did some damage to this one.....
http://forum.grasscity.com/attachmen...cs-day10-3.jpg
Any ideas on the yellow leaves?


Whats your current oder control? Im thinking of getting a carbon filter sometime soon.