First grow, DWC, Moby Dick, 600watt HPS + 225 watt track lights

Discussion in 'Indoor Grow Journals' started by gtq838, Jan 5, 2013.

  1. So this is our first grow attempt. We are growing 4 Moby Dick plants in DWC and 1 of what we believe is Mozar growing in potting soil. I appreciate any help and advice offered to us during this grow. We have done a lot of research but the contradictory info and speculation leads to a lot of confusion. Anyways here are the details.

    Grow room: 8'x6'x9' room mostly lined with Mylar.

    Air: air is being filtered with a high end Honeywell HEPA filter and a homemade HEPA/carbon filter. Humidity is being regulated with a timer and ultra sonic humidifier with a cool ultra violet light to sterilize the water and air at the same time.. Supposedly. It is cool though its setup to go off 30 minutes after lights off and start 30 minutes before lights on. The humidity stays at about 44% and temp at 77-79.

    Water. Water is in the bucket that came with the kit however we added a second much better pump and air stone. We run both pumps at the same time and both are on a battery backup. The water tank is covered in reflective tape and is being chilled to about 70-73F with a Peltier cooler, probably only about 15 watts but I think we should be able to get that down to 68 once I add insulation around my tub. PH is kept at 6, I gather 5.5-5.8 is better but I'm using drops and it's not easy to tell what 5.5 is. We will be ordering a PPM/PH meter soon, suggestion on the type are welcome.

    Setup/preparation: we sterilized the entire room prior to putting it together. Cleaned tub with h2o2. PH rock-wool to 5.5 for 24 hours.

    Progress: we are about a week into it from seeds. We are just now seeing very tiny second set of real leafs (not the seedling leafs)

    Lighting: 600watt dimming HPS and 3x75 watt track lights, not sure what type of bulb. Running them 18/6.
     
  2. The grow box.
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    Water is 72F right now and 79.2F in the room
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    The biggest so far of all of them is the Mozar. Probably because I did paper towel and plastic bag on this one and the others went straight in Rock-wool
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    Forgot to mention we are using store brand "filtered water" says reverse osmosis or distilled or both. No nutes at this point however I plan on using the unlabeled packets that came with the kit unless somebody convinces me thats stupid.
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    Air Filters and batter backup
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    Pump with kit and in my hand the pump I upgraded to. Actually about the same air flow but it looks like the new one has like HEPA filtration built in or something crazy. Definately has some weight to it also.
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    Peltier/TEC Cooler on side of tub
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    HPS power source
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  3. Plants look great I added 1/4 nutes yesterday. One plant has me a little worried with a light brown color forming near the top of the roots however I looked and the water level was about that height so I think it's just stains from the nutes I'm running 2 air stones and water temp stays between 67-70 at this point. A different one had a gel like substance on the tip of the root and very slight tent of orange or brown. It wiped away and didn't smell. I have pics for later. Hopefully it is just normal, I am a bit paranoid for this to be a success because we have a decent amount invested at this point.

    There is one runt in the group with barely any roots but it looks like its roots are gonna pop out of the cage in a day or so and start growing fast.
     
  4. I have since added 10 23watt 6500k bulbs to the room. They can't be places very close to the plant because of the current layout but I figure it can only help.
     
  5. Got a little discoloration in the roots that had me worried a couple days ago. I've since been adding h2o2 once a day in small amounts. The discoloration went away but the roots get a bit frothy which is to be expected I figure.. Still I rinsed them off. From what I read this stain needs more nutes than normal. Gonna do a bucket change tonight. I'm gonna try to ph the water in the jugs. I'm thinking I will add nutes to 60 percent. the week after will be 90 percent and then maybe 110 percent. We previously had 25 percent nutes I believe. Next check I will order a ph meter and ppm. At this point I'm pretty good with the drops and I think I can even dial in at about 5.8 but we will see when we get a better testing method. The ph meters are confusing so many bad reviews leaves me questioning their accuracy and considering staying with the drops. They aren't precision but I believe them to be accurate.
     
  6. Plants are doing well. They really seem to be enjoying the extra nutes, I think I was right to up them. I plan on buying some better nutes this pay check and an official ph/ppm meter. H2o2 is leaving foamy suds around the roots and it scares me a little, I'm backing the h2o2 to 50% what I had been doing.

    Will try to upload so more pics soon. Oh we found another Mozar seed and have it sprouting in rockwool now, figured we could still grow this under the same lights.

    I'm probably going to get y splitters for the big power bar 6500k bulbs that's way we can have 460watts of cfl 600 hps and 225 halogen.
     
  7. Did a little research on the white suds. I think this is just h2o2 because it looks the same as h2o2 on skin also if you get a big amount if it on your fingers and rub it you find that it's not slippery at all and just feels like a drop of water. I will continue to watch closely but I think it's ok since the conditions for Algae are not really met. The box is light proof with the exceptions of the pots and those are mostly covered with reflective tape. Also the water temp is cool and I have dual air pumps running one of which is a nice one.
     
  8. Ok so we had a bit of a scare this morning we had all of our plants exhibiting slight bronze tips at worst or at best dark green leafs with lighter spots on the tips. We had just switched nutes yesterday from mystery nutes that came with the kit to flora nova. We used the 600p dose recommended for young plants. Maybe we should have gone with seedling at 300ppm. We took half the nute water out and diluted with ro water. The water is much more transparent. I will keep an eye out hopefully this stops and it starts growing good again. We also purchased a nice ph meter and we have the ph kept at 5.8 now. It was higher than I thought it was with the drops by about .5 in my estimate.

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  9. Oh thougt I should note for beginners like me or more experiences growers about to educate me. We have stopped h2o2 use because the flora nova should not be used with it according to the hydro store guy. Unless extreme circumstance of course.
     
  10. get the tin foil out of there. Foil can create hot spots and burn plants. Setup looks clean. Good luck!
     
  11. I removed the foil over the pots the other day actually. I'm leaving the foil on the lid though. It may cause hot spots but weighing that against light penetrating the lid I think I would be better with it on. Thanks for the advice. FYI not sure if it makes a difference but that was not tin foil.
     
  12. Just an update the grow has expanded. We are now growing 4 moby dick 2 Mozar 1 diamond girl 1 afghan kush/yum bolt 1 flow 1 sour rhino 1 amnesia 1 pure kush. All are fem except the 2 Mozar, flow, and sour rhino. The new 4 fem seeds will be going in a similar dwc setup and the room will be getting an extra light in about 3 weeks. We are thinking 1000w hps with vented hood and carbon filter. With that we will be pushing a little over 2000w. The plants look great so far.
     
  13. Getting bigger each day. We have topped the one in soil and will probably top at least 3 of the dwc plants today

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  14. Here are the babies. They are a little stretchy. They kinda got away from us so now they are much closer to the light.

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  15. The new bucket, expandable to 6 plants maybe?

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    We have two medium sized air stones that make the micro bubbles

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    New air pump with dual output 45-80 gallon rated, of course that rating is for fish. 2.7psix2

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  16. Late update here. Res change was performed on the 22nd and the plants really seem to be enjoying it. I think we FIMed 3 and topped 2. The biggest in in the bucket was topped 4 days ago I think. It stopped growing for 2 days and now is in full grow mode again. The others were top/FIMed 2 days ago and are just waking up.

    I'm surprised how good the dirt plants are doing because I was just feeding them filtered tap water, really good filter but I was not ph balancing it because I didn't care too much about it. Well I tested the water yesterday and its like 8.2 out of the tap. I have started to lower the PH to 6.5 for soil plants. I'm just guessing the PH to use for soil because I've been working on my car and haven't had time to research but 6.5 must be better than 8.2 which it's doing really well with, lol.
     
  17. Here is the grow room now... Next week I will be adding a 1000watt hps vented hood with electric ballast

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