Aeroponic(HPA), LED, stealth flowering cabinet

Hello everyone

Here is my first post for this awesome comunity.

This is a high pressure aeroponic system with 3 plants starting their first day of flowering. 1 ak47, 2 ice
(left to rigth)

-196 watt led panel with 6w emitters set to low power (hopefully 3w, dont know)

-3 DIY carbon filters powered by server grade 12v fans. Additional fans and heat-sinks aid with heat mass extraction through channels behind the panel, thus leading the hot air up to the exhaust and away from the developing plants.

-Temperatures remain at about 80F if the room remains at 73F. RH is normally between 40-55%

-CO2 levels are normally between 700 and 1300ppm. this are atmospheric levels in my apartment without using any type of enrichment tek.

-There is a Sentinel master timer to enforce aeroponics irrigation schedule:
1second on/8.5minutes off

-Max water capacity 1.5gallons, today we start at 500ppm and 5.8pH adjusted water.

-Flowering nutes and supplements (most by AN):
Connoiseur
bud ignitor
bud candy
rhino skin
H2 humic acid
hygrozyme
Great white beneficial fungi and bacteria
big bud, overdrive and final phase are to join later on.

-total cab dimensions are 12*30*36

enjoy

 

Repost

 

I designed this system based on my space and security limitations, around the LED panel I already owned, and the desire to follow true aeroponic protocols.

Things are already a little crowded in there and I expect it to get very very crouded very soon (Hopefully crouded with buds). Consider that the actual volume for the buds to fill up is the area of the panel(20"x14"), multiplied by the available depth (9.5"), there are 5 extra inches of height available but these fall out of the optimum zone. The cabinet I use is not even a conventional floor cabinet. It is actually a shallower wall cabinet, and not only that, it also has its own electronic security system featuring numeral passcode access and alarm (standard).

I bet I could grow some white widow in it, I would just need to flip to bloom at a maximum height of 4-5". I say this because in a previous grow attempt I noticed that my male WW stretch 50% more than my Ice plants (without training or topping).

As a matter of fact I was attempting to grow some white widow max for this setup. I am almost certain that all my seedlings failed, nonetheless there is a slight chance that the rightmost plant is a WWM.

The panel is manufactured by Haight Solid State, Model PPF800 with a nominal 196W, sets u back about 450,and It lacks an active cooling system, or any kind of decent heatsinks for that matter. I invested 100 bucks in thermal silver epoxy and 10 heatsinks which I cemented directly behind the hottest diodes. It's corners are full of all the resistors and components that run the panel, these get very hot, so I velcroed two pc blowers to actively pull an air stream though their surface, and out the cabinet's main exhausts.

In other words the ventilation requierements to place this LED panel in this setup have been EPIC to say the least, but none the less it is the 196W LED panel that will occupy the absolute least volume in my enclosure....until now....

I have devised an idea for a grow cab where the leds are not even in the cab itself. Therefore you can blast your plants with as much LEDs as your pockets are deep, without any need for heavy duty heat mass extraction. and use only 50 to 100 bucks of 12v ventilation and odor control

Stay away from any panel with LEDs rated to less that 1W, I think an ufo from a reputable manufacturer will do better than a cheap flat ebay panel. Why? Mainly because it has 1w diodes.

I also believe that in LEDs you get what you pay for, and I would not expect to get an ounze of dense buds if my LEDs cost less than that ounze. (From what I have read you might pull that off with an HPS though).

Stay tuned for tomorrow's update when we begin the second week of flowering.

 

Hey Everyone

I have some eyecandy for you. I just learnt how to take some great shots under LEDs even when they are blasting high.

By the way, I noticed and fixed one of the exhaust blowers which had a faulty wire (for god knows how long), I should be able to lower my temps more easily now that that is working.

I also want to mention that my LED panel has two switches to control the intensity of the light between high and low. One switch controls the reds, the other blues and whites.
So far I have kept both on low but tonight I decided to switch the red switch to high. We can state that we are running lights at 75% as of today.

I am keeping a close look on temperature and leaf bleaching for the next couple of days.

What do you guys think I should do if some bleaching occurs on the leaves that are touching the panel, should I let the plants stand it, or turn the lights down again?

The leftmost plant has a shoot stretching 3" above the canopy line and I'm thinking about topping it and cloning it in the morning.

This girls have been eating nutes like crazy...me likeee.

During the first week the water reservoir lasted 5 days before getting to 1/10th of it full capacity. At this point the remaining water had 800ppm, I then half filed the reservoir and the TDS went down to 440ppm. We are currently back to 600ppm and the remaining water will probably last for another 6hours. We will start at 800ppm in the morning

So, without further ado.

Last Question: How can you rotate the pictures posted in this forum? They appear vertical in my files, but once uploaded it tips again...

 

Update:

pH and TDS monitor will no longer take accurate measurements; Don't buy Hanna instruments ever again.

The temperatures have remained really nice and cool thanks to the last exhaust fix; at 75F it is just 1 degree over ambient.

The plants have taken 75% of the panel's power without any sign of trouble. The leaves do sweat evidently where they get to kiss the LEDs. I have decided to go 100% as of today and temps just rose to 80F

Internodal spacing has increased from about 1" to 2" at some intervals in the superior and lateral branches. This stretch is driving me nuts.

 

Update week 2-day 3:

Last night the panel was switched back to 75% to prevent further agravation of evident plant stress. TDS was also lowered to 540ppm.

I have an increasing number of black and dead tips on the rifle, a couple of leaves closer to the light also show a lot of nute burn in between their veins. This is the most affected plant.

The center Ice only shows a couple of dead tips and some downward curling leaves.
Notably though, the right Ice plant does not exhibit any of those symptoms.

Improvements are noticeable in the rootzone since the irrigation cicle was made more generous at 1s on, to 6.5min off. After one day on this schedule some microhairs were spotted on the roots around the netpod.
I believe an even more generous cicle is in order, thus the pulse lenght was doubled to 2seconds.

 

Hello Guys

Sorry for the delay, and no-update during the last two weeks. This post will make up for that and includes what has been going down in the flowering cab during weeks 3 and 4 of flowering.

During week 3 the plants stretched up to the limit I desired and I decided I would try to bend the highest branches and train them through a metal grid with openings of about 1"x1". I realized this idea was not working so well when I could not stop the little cola from getting damaged during the bending. The screen went out and I tried to bend a branch using some fuzzy pipe-cleaners. This resulted in catastrophic failure when the branch snapped. This branch was supposed to be the main cola for my ak47, but now it had been topped.

some days later I realized that it was getting very crowded in there, and tons of fanleaves were pushing against the panel, and keeping the leds from dispersing their light all the way to the back. I decided I would eliminate almost all of the fan leaves that were against the panel while leaving the ones on the front to absorb whatever stray light before it had a chance to reflect off the mylar.

I have also started using Big Bud in my feeding schedule. Feeding is happening every 4 days, which is how long my reservoir lasts. When I top I set the ppm to 600 and by the 3rd or 4th day it reaches 800ppm (this cycle is repeated every time I top off). I try keeping Ph between 5.5 and 5.8 but I have seen it go up to 7 if unchecked for a couple of days. In my feeding I also had to discontinue the use of the organic Iguana Juice and H2 humic acid because my nozzles were getting clogged; all of them had to be unclogged and I have been using the Connoisseur line since.

Note---all attached pics are from week 3---

During week 4 I had to top off the ice plant to the right, I also started to train her side branches so that they all bend into the light panel, instead of running off into my fans. The two top colas of the other two plants also had to be gently tied to get them away from my carbon filters and into regions with more light.

Buds have begun to swell, but I also started to notice many leaves drooping and curling down. Most old growth showed this symptoms progressively getting worse as I inspected the plant from bottom to top. Lower new growth did not show this symptoms at all and was perky and unaffected.


Maybe I should have not trimmed my plants so much, but my most educated guess is that this was the product of dehydration, so I checked my nozzles and 2 out of 6 were clogged. I then unclogged them, cleansed the others and also messed with my pump timer, setting it to 2seconds on / 5:30 minutes off (6:30min off previously). I believe either the Big Bud is creating particulate to clog them nozzles, or it is product of root debris coming from the return line and then making it though my 100micron filters.


That is all for this post folks! thanks a lot for tuning in. And if you will, leave some feedback so I can improve my methods.

 

Hey! I got some bud pr0n today.

All attached pictures are from the 1st day of week 5.

Besides showing a large amount of buds starting to form from even the lowest branches, you can also see the symptoms of stress this crop exhibits: Notice how leaves lose width and curl in the upper sections of the canopy and, down below, you can see a couple of wilting leaves and some black tips.

Also forgive those ugly main colas, for they were growing into the filters and got ruffed up.

IMPORTANT QUESTION:
At what time (week#) should I start impeding further new bud development?

I read this is important because the plant will waste energy in growing buds that won't have time to mature.

 

Stay tuned folks

A major mod is coming to this cab by the end of the week!

 

Your answear will be illustrated in the next update.

Merry rollin

 

Bad news guys

The mod I promissed may have to wait, at least, another 2 weeks or 3 weeks.

The reason for this is that the main ingredient for the mod has been delayed for release by the manufacturer.

Given this situation I may not get to implement it for the remaining of this grow....

Maybe a bit during the flushing phase if I'm lucky.

 

Tonight I have pictures from the lit side of the moon.

2 days into week six I took the plants out of the cabinet and this is what I found on the other side.

Since there was access to the front, I took the time to do some trimming. Almost all damaged growth was clipped off. A few healthy fan leaves were also removed to get more light across. I feel this trimming was much more conservative than the previous one.

little buds look little....but frosty...

A couple of recent observation:

-A full reservoir now lasts 80 hours.
-I had set pH to 5.6 and pushed the tds to 1000ppm for the first 2 days of week six. Then down to 900ppm on day 3, and when I came back 2 days later I found it at 1700ppm and ph 5.1. Some nute-burn was also observed. The plants seem to have swallowed half of all the nutes, since after I topped off the res with pure water the reading showed only 440ppm left.
-I will continue to feed at 1000ppm or higher and I pressume I will take this girls all the way to week 11.

 

This is a late update from week 7

I have allowed the nutrient concentration to drift up to 1800ppm, but normally keep it at 1400ppm.

Also lowered feeding frequency down to 1second every 10minutes.

the Ice plants seem to be responding positively to the elevated nutrient levels, while the AK shows a bit of burn.

 

Major mod and update boys & gals

Update first:

Since the Ice plants produced no bud so far, most of the following does not concern them. I plan on harvesting my AK and then leave the others until they do something, anything...

Last week (end of week 8) I microscoped my AKs trichromes and saw:
milky (20%)
amber (5%),
Clear (75%)

I am inexperienced and I think that seeing amber trichromes means to start preparing for harvest.
I want to perform a two week flush and I also want to harvest when most of my trichs are milky white to get a sweet trippy trip.

Taking this into account I stopped all feeding and started using pH 5.8, 0ppm water with ANs Final Flush.
As a note: at the recommended feeding level of this flushing agent pushes the ppms up to 160ppm, but after flushing for a while, they went up to 600ppm.

I thought that 2 weeks should be enough of a time window for the trichs to turn the desired color, but it is now week 9 and I have not noticed much change.
I now believe I started to flush too prematurely, and am at the dilemma of either restarting feeding or just let her keep flushing until I see her done.

Any suggestions on this dilemma?


For today's mod I thought outside the box and went to get my boy's toys to do a little drilling and cutting.
I cut a simple and unrefined wood counter for my cab, drilled a 4" hole in it and then a 2.5" concentric one through the metal itself. I then sanded, debuured, and covered the edges with some foam for protection, because a very expensive piece of tech was gonna be snugly fitted inside.

All of this was done so I could give my babies this cool and insanely bright red sun:

The light is a Kessil H350.
90W of raw LED power emanating at 60 degrees from an area smaller than a dime.
Hopefully it wont bleach my babies. A smaller version of it, the H150 at only 36W is able to bleach leaves 3" away (known from experience), but I am impulsive so I went overkill, (also buying several H150s is more expensive).

As a matter of fact I was actually thinking of putting three of them on that counter. but then decided to try only one and see how good it works.

I fitted this baby in, vacuumed all my cab, cleaned my reflective surfaces, the face of my LED panel, and finally I turned my blue and white LEDs down to low so it is pushing only 75% of its total power.

The change is amazing, The cab now stays only at 5degrees over ambient, as long as the air in the closet is around 70-72. I am also having a harder time trying to take pictures.

I also include a couple pictures of my filter assemblies and demonstrate their magnetic mounts. Notice the fans rating at 3.4A, these are the biggest pc blowers out there, and they will smoke the magic out of almost every fan controler. I had to give my fan controller its dedicated cooling fan to prevent the channels driving those from burning up (again).

 

So far I'm