cdphalanx Grow Journal (DWC/Scrog/T5HO)

Hi Folks,

Im not entirely sure what I expect to get out of this posting, but figured 'why the hell not?' ... so feel free to post whatever, especially helpful stuff, like things ive overlooked, etc. Yeah, thats always appreciated .

Brand spankin new grower, here . I started this venture with a good buddy of mine. We're doing DWC/Scrog in a space that is roughly 4ft(w)x3ft(h)x2ft(d). We have some additional space to expand if things go well, but I'd imagine this will be sufficient for our desires.

We started off with 12 random seeds we had collected over time. Those were soaked and then placed in Rapid-Rooter on Aug 13th in 24/0 beneath two 3ft 39w t5ho fluorescent bulbs, about 4-6in from the lights.

The first sprout was seen about 48hrs later followed by 5 others in short succession.. the rest never germinated . So we're at 50% so far, not too shabby . Now, we have to hope that we get a couple females out of the bunch .

After sprouting, we gave them about a week and a half under 24/0 but 4 of the same bulbs used previously instead of 2. This gave them time to produce a solid root structure that formed under the rapid rooter.

On Aug 27th, we placed each of the 6 seedlings into a small basket and filled in with hydroton. At this point, we placed two baskets each, into a total of three 3.5g buckets. Each bucket is filled 3g with nutrients added per the volume/schedule. This sits the water level just at the bottom of the rapid rooter so to keep the medium moist but not saturated. Each bucket also has an air-stone working from a pump nearby.

At this point, we also switched to 18/6. Currently we're only working with the same 4 lights, with plants roughly 1ft from the bulbs. They have been like this for almost a week and the pH is tested at least twice a day and has been relatively stable from 5.6-6.3 range. It may be worth noting we are also using RO water in our growing mediums.

So far, the seedlings range from 2in to just shy of 3in in height and seem to be healthy. Im hoping to pick up some additional lighting in the next couple days to try and get a few more lumens on the babies.

Once we can determine sex, we should be able to then remove any males or transplant females into another bucket in the event that both seedlings occupying one bucket are female. By that time the plants should be about 8-10in and ready to start being trained under the screen.

Thats the plan, at least... we'll see how it goes. Heres a couple attached pics of everything currently.

Thanks for looking!

 

Much improvement so far on all plants, especially after taking a look at those old pics again. Everything has gotten quite bushier.

I have an 4ft 8-bulb fixture that I have rigged up with a height adjustment system that I created a couple days ago. For the time being, I have the old 4-bulb fixture attached to the rig. The rig has helped tremendously so far as it has allowed us to get the bulbs 1-2in from the tops of the plants and keep it steadily moving upwards as they grow.

Once I get some replacement bulbs, later today, I'll be able to set up the new fixture and get a ton more light on these babies. They technically should have been switched to receive more light on Monday, per the schedule, but it just didnt happen. I figure if Im a few days off I'll be alright... which could end up being a big noob mistake.

Once I can get the new fixture in, I'll also be transplanting a couple of the stronger seedlings into their own individual buckets so they can have some more breathing room and not have to share water/nutes. During this time, Ill be replacing the water/nutrients in all buckets.

I'll try and remember to post a few new pics later on tonight.

 

A couple questions, below:

Info:
Day 23 - from seed - random unknown seeds
Air Temp: 84f
Humidity: 58-61%

B1 - 5.70pH 1192ppm, 79.1f
B2 - 5.65pH 1137ppm, 80f
B3 - 5.56pH 1133ppm, 78.3f

Nutes: Aquaflakes A&B
Using RO Water

Just went down to check on the plants a few minutes ago and have encountered my first issue.

Theres two things Im noticing, here.
A: Yellowing of a leaf in Bucket#1 and a couple other leaves on othe rplants have very small sns of yellowing on the tips.
B: the PPM levels. Based on what Ive read, and I could easily be wrong, that the PPMs are in direct correlation with the yellowing on the leaf and should ultimately be a lot lower at this stage of the grow. Closer to 400ish ppm.

I'm taking a guess that this is nute burn?

A huge mistake that I made, just thinking about it now, is that I added nutes to the solution 2 days ago without flushing the growing medium first. The solution in the medium had been in there for a week already. I simply topped it off and added a full dosing of nutes. I will be draining the mediums completely this evening and going through the motions that I should have done on Monday.

Maybe this will rectify my issue?

Each bucket is currently home to 2 plants, so I did a full measure of nutes per bucket... effectively giving each plant 50% nutes at this time.

Is this sound logic? or am I batshit-crazy?

Pics are attached... in order of Bucket 1, 2, 3. Bucket 1 shows the yellowing noted previously.

 

Yeah, the rapid rooters have been awesome so far. This will ultimately be a perpetual grow, so Ive got a bunch more where that came from waiting for clones/seeds. Hopefully the RR works as well as it did the first time around.

Thanks for the input on PPMs. Hopefully after I drain/cleanse/refill my growing medium/solution the PPMs will be more in-check.

 

Well, new 8-bulb fixture is in and working like a charm. The height adjustment rig isnt perfect but it will get the job done.

Also drained, cleaned, filled 3g w/ RO water and added nutes to all 3 buckets. PPM levels look WAY better now sitting in the 230-310 range. One of them the PPM readings were kind of all over the place and the pH was low (roughly 5.1) even after adding a few mL of pH+... wasnt making sense, so I got it relatively close and will check it again in the morning. I was coming up on my dark period and needed to clean up.

Hopefully this helps with the nute burn.

 

There was, indeed, some new green growth. Clearly the plants are liking the additional light.

Bucket 1 is still giving me really whacky readings as now the PPMs have skyrocketed again up around 1100, while the other two are spot-on and the pH is still too low (5.3). I'll likely just try and dilute it some more to bring the PPMs down (again) and will do another fresh flush/cleanse/refill/nutes on Monday instead of getting even farther off schedule than I currently am.

As for my TDS meter, Im not entirely sure what type it is. My partner supplied it and used to use it for his aquarium. I'll have to check on the brand/details later tonight and do some research but I'm skeptical that the meter is my issue due to only seeing funky readings in one of the buckets.

Edit: Heard from my buddy and this is the meter we are using:
http://www.hannainst.com/usa/prods2.cfm?id=030001&ProdCode=HI 98130

 

Yeah, its definitely a little weird. I try to give the buckets about 10-15min between adjustment and re-reading... I'll have to look into recalibrating the meter tonight after work. I think we're also going to try and get our hands on another meter to try and compare side-by-side.

That being said, I wonder if this could be another potential reason. The bucket that is giving whacky readings is a 'new' bucket. I had picked up a couple new ones (from the same supply store, in the same exact item location) that I did not realize were slightly different than the ones we already had until after I got home.

Since Bucket 1 is a 'new' giving whacky readings, and Buckets 2&3 are 'old' and are providing steady readings, I'm wondering if I didnt thoroughly clean the 'new' bucket enough and there is some residual bacteria/minerals/whatever inside that is throwing things off track.

 

Okay, so when I got home, I completely cleaned and refilled/mixed nutes into another one of the 'old' buckets, waited about 15 min and measured everything and it was in tolerable range. At this time, I placed what is my largest, probably healthiest plant into this new mixture. I decided that this plant was large enough to deserve its own container.

I left the other plant from the 'new' bucket in it as it is already the most sickly looking one. I checked the ppm's etc and they were still way too high (roughly 1100). So, I dumped about half of the water and topped off the container with RO water.

I also wasnt able to get my hands on another meter to compare, but Im skeptical still that the meter is off as it has been consistent throughout except for that one bucket yesterday/this morning, especially since all 4 buckets are reading similar now.

So now, Ive got 4 buckets.
Bucket 1: Sickly plant, newly diluted solution.
Bucket 2: Big, healthy plant, new solution
Bucket 3: 2 smaller, healthy plants, one-day old solution
Bucket 4: 2 Smaller, healthy plants, one-day old solution

I let these newly alters solutions sit for about 3hrs and then came back to check everything. The details are as follows:

Air Temp: 88f
Humidity: 62-63%

B1 -76.0f, 863ppm, 5.75pH
B2 -74.4f, 607ppm, 5.50pH
B3 -81.1f, 701ppm, 5.32ph
B4 -80.0f, 688ppm, 5.43pH

All in all, I dont mind what I see. The PPMs are still a little higher than I'd like, but hopefully this will drop if I top the water slightly tomorrow or saturday.

Depending on what happens with the sickly plant, I have a couple options. I could put it out of its misery and take another one of the healthier plants and place it in that bucket, thus giving 2 more plants their own growing medium.

At some point soon Im going to need to choose which 4 plants stay and which 2 go, but Im going to try and give that another week, or at least until Monday.

Heres some pics, left-to-right Bucket 1 thru 4. 2 pics each, one top of the bucket, one at the stem/nodes. Then one of how the setup currently looks.

 

So, week 4 comes to a close today. We'll be doing a complete flsuh/clean/refill of our growing mediums this evening. I'll probably post some pictures afterwards. I also realized that using 8x54w bulbs was a bit of overkill for the current phase so turned off 1/2 the bulbs to get closer to 5000 lumen/sqft from the nearly 10k l/sqft that we were at.

I actually have a second fixture exactly like the one that we're currently using, so what I believe we're going to do is expand the grow space slightly so that we can utilize both fixtures and be able to spread the plants out more and give them some extra room to grow once theyre on the screen. I figure the more surface area for the screen/canopy, the better.

Using this, we'll have 4 bulbs in each 8-bulb fixture that are for veg, and we can put 4 flowering bulbs in each of the fixtures empty slots. That way, when it comes time to switch, its a matter of literally only flipping a switch rather than putting up new lights and/or taking replacing bulbs constantly.

A couple things we've realized as well.

First, I think we switched to 18/6 a week too early. We probably should have given the plants an extra week at 24/0. Im not entirely convinced that this is/was a problem, but it 'could' be linked to lack of plant height.

Second, should not have grown 2 plants in a single bucket for as long as we did. In one of the buckets, one plant looked gradually more sickly while the plant that shared its bucket looked great. Those were split up late last week and the smaller/sickly plant never really looked like it recovered. Because we're currently pressed for space, we made the hard choice to sacrifice that plant in favor of splitting up another one of the buckets that had 2 plants.

Last night, we did the same with the last bucket that had 2 plants remaining in it. It was a necessary evil, at the time, but I will not be doing more than 1 plant per bucket again. Way too much chance for shocking the plants when transplant time comes as the roots got intertwined, etc.

So, even though we've made some mistakes, right now we've got 5 buckets going with one plant in each and all seem to have taken quite nicely to having their own personal grow medium. Im sure they will like it even more when we get the second T5 fixture in place and spread them out a bit.

Now, here is where I have a little bit of theoretical talk to go through... so bear with me, if youre still reading.

The plants, after 4 weeks, are still under 4in tall. I feel like after 2 weeks of being on a 18/6 light cycle that they would have grown quite a bit taller. All plants are plenty bushy and producing lots of healthy growth, just not growth upwards. Maybe they spent the last 2 weeks generating solid roots and will start shooting upwards this week, who knows.

Im thinking that this could be one of two things, or a combination of both.

1. Switched to 18/6 too early
2. Use of RO water without adding CalMag.

While talking with another local guy, he had mentioned that if we're using RO water we'd want to add CalMag as well. At the time, I thought he was blowing smoke, but Ive done and am continuing to look into it, but it seems as if that is, in fact, something we should start adding to our nutrient solution soon.

Anyone have any insight, here?

 

Last night we were able to flush each bucket and refill with fresh water/nutes. I dont have specific ph/ppm/temp readings on-hand, but will be checking all that tonight.

As this is my first grow, Im terrified to do any trimming of the leaves etc, but I feel like I should probably start pruning soon, so that when it comes time to Scrog them, enough of the bud-producing sites are getting their fair share of the light.

Also seeing a little yellowing on leaf tips/edges in a couple spots, nothing like what was posted previously, but Ive already started looking for help/insight in this thread:
http://forum.grasscity.com/sick-plants-problems/1106216-nute-burn-something-else.html

Heres a few pictures from this morning. As you can see, we got the second light fixture up and running. The only thing left for the space, now, is to get our exhaust fan set up. We actually have the fan and ducting, but the fan is too strong. I'll be picking up a ceiling fan dimmer tonight to rig up and see if that works.

... of course, is the grow room ever 'done'? Im having way too much fun with this merely as a science project. Ive got a few different ideas that I may try out after seeing how this first grow does.

Thoughts?

 

No pics, but the one that had the visible yellowing looked much worse today. The leaves were entirely yellowed and looked completely devoid of life. My partner trimmed it up a bit, as well as one of the others just to see how they respond. I wish i had read this first. Damn. Guess I'll just chalk it up as a rookie mistake.

Good news, though. We got the exhaust going, but have to turn the fan way down to not get negative pressure (or positive? Always get that backwards) in the tent. Will be looking at intake options tomorrow.

Also noticed another rookie mistake. The power strip that was powering the pumps was also powering the lights, and the whole strip was plugged into the timer, meaning we had no bubbles during dark period for 6 hours a night. :doh:

Btw: thank you for replying. Haven't had a single other responder and you've been a tremendous help.

 

Everybody is looking happier today than yesterday, but the two that we trimmed slightly are easily the farthest behind.

air temp 82f
humidity 48%
pH levels from 5.5 to 6.05
ppm from 590 to 680
temp from 75-77.5f

updated pics of the plants (buckets 1-5 in order) and the newly added exhaust as well as the varying additives being used.

i am having a bit of an issue with the exhaust system and too much negative pressure. thread lookin for input on intake solutions here:
http://forum.grasscity.com/grow-roo...ing-i-need-intake-hole-but-where-how-big.html

Still a couple issue areas, but I think Im just going to try and ride it out and see how we go. Maybe Ill take a clone or two next week to see how that goes, assuming I get some good additional growth in the coming days.

 

Yup, the both the plant and mag amped were added Monday for the very first time. Hadnt found must definitive info on whether or not you need to need to add cal+mag when using H&G and RO water but seemed to be more 'opinions' leaning towards adding cal+mag, so I went and did it.

We are using RO water, so maybe Ill go and do another full flush this afternoon to rid the plant and mag amped from the solution, then. hmm ... thanks for the heads-up.

 

Sounds like a plan. Thanks!

Now to get this intake thing figured out. :thinking: