welcome, I decided to journal my first grow ever. I needed this to be as stealthy as possible, since I kinda live with my folks who dont really know I smoke, let alone grow something haha. The set up is as follows: -LED diy light, 5 cool white diodes, 4x450nm diodes, 10x630 nm diodes, 16x660 nm diodes. All "3 watt chips". 12 diodes of 660nm are running on a 350 mA driver and the rest on a 650 nm dimmable driver, but constantly set on a bit lower than max setting due to heat. Max available power 47W, will run at 37W most of the time i think -Hempy bucket, 2 plants in 1 split-pot, 100% perlite -120mm fan to pull air out (Cooler Master Sickleflow, I advise not to buy them, their motor makes a clicking sound when running). This thing has a diy 3 speed setting made with a resistor circuit and a switch (because in my freaking village of a country one cant even find simple 100 ohm potenciometers). Can be set with no restriction, 47 ohm or 70 ohm -80 mm fan for circulation, constantly with a 100 ohm load in front to keep it silent -A case of dimensions 17,5cm x 38cm x 40cm or something around that. Its a mid tower. -Some diy mufflers from perforated carbon and stuff. At first I planned to add a carbon filter with 2 120mm fans, one pushing one pulling and replacable carbon "cartridge". Made it, installed it and it actually worked, it was pulling air through it, but it was no where near silent, so I will make an ozone generator, i ordered a cold cathode lamp kit on ebay, will use the power supply to make a corona discharge. The box was supposed to be light and air tight, but since no C filter.. i think ill let it be as it is, for now. 1 seed showed a tap root a day and a half ago, the other one today (the first had like a 2cm tap root when i put them into perlite today, no rockwool, no peat cubes, just stick em' right in there) The box is in a cabinet sort of thing, so little air exchange with the outside. For this I will make a CO2 generator later, with either yeast or baking soda and vinegar drip system. The good part is that it is virtually silent, I can hear it only if i listen hard. Sorry for the text wall, I like to make it thorough. Here, have some pics as retribution.
Half a day in, getting ~25 deg. celsius in the box running only the 650ma driver (it has all the veg lights). One problem though, Today i saw that i have 92% humidity by the surface of the perlite. thats freaking much. I thought id have too little humidity in here, not too much. Can this still slide though ? I persume the germed seeds enjoy this kind of environment, but what about later, mold inevitable as i see it. Any easy way to reduce humidity ?
the first seed broke the surface. The shell is still on though. I water very lightly twice a day (like 50 ml per seed at a time) Jees, over 300 views and no one cares to reply, are you that much put off by the metric system ? lol
25 chinese leds and 10 osram golden dragons (630 nm). No real difference in heat output, but osrams are a tad brighter than the 660 nm chinese. Seeds are unknown starin, a grower buddy gave them to me from his pollinated autoflowers. Was great smoke though. UPDATE: the second seed hadnt broken surface yet today, so i looked around and saw a root above perlite, like wtf, growing up side down ? dug a bit and found 2 seedlings lol, now have 3 plants out of 2 seeds. Will see who holds up best. Any one know when autos show their sex ? The biggest seedling is drooping a bit, not sure if too dry or too wet. Been watering twice a day with little amounts as perlite gets dry quite fast. Gave the drooper a "big" watering and none for the others, will see who responds better
Looks really nice! I was planning on doing something similar. But money and time was of the essence so I just used a large CFL instead The link to my thread is in my signature. Not finished though. I did something similar with the light trap. Works pretty well. Need to install one on the back. If I remember correctly, autoflowers show their sex after 2-3 weeks? Or am I totally off?
Yea man, I saw your thread, you have lots of space, so no problem to use cfls. I dont really have a light trap, the cardboard thing in the front is actually a lame ass muffler (still helps), serves as a light trap too though Im not really too concerned about light traps as the box is permanently in the closet. just wish the darn plants would grow :/ they keep drooping and are barely getting any bigger, if any. Tried not watering the other two, no visible difference, all in the same condition. I mean come on its like only 2 inches untill the reservoir, really not that far away, i saw people do hempy in 2 l bottles and it still worked.
Nice little setup mate, never seen an all perlite grow yet. I thought all auto's were female? I'm thinking too much light will penetrate the perlite and fuck up the roots, maybe try and cover it? Root like darkness.
Well autos are basically ruderalis strain, and as any strain you can have male or female of it. Its just that seed banks usually dont want to sell regular autoflower seeds. Whats the business if people can breed them on their own ? I was also worried about perlite being a bit transparent, but it is actually quite the opposite, the light does not pass through it, as long as there are no gaps towards the roots, basically a few millimeters are enough to make it dark
biggest- 6 days old 2 others- 4 days old will leave 2 most likely. I did a rookie mistake and over watered them, largest was looking worst, now its recovered i think, all of them now got second set of real leaves, however small now i need some car battery acid for ph control (ofc no one sells simple ph down in my country.. ha) and im set for nutes, not using them yet though
10 days for the larger one (3rd set of leaves) and 8 for the other two (above ground) I managed to drop a worki g circulation fan on the bigger one, but just lightly cut two leaves and it's growing like it never happened. Atm 1 driver is off (only reds on it), but i still get like 31 celcius with the closet being shut (at max power). I put on lenses on white and blue diodes, its more of a veg lamp atm, running at like 26w, but its only a guess, can be a bit more, i like this flexibility with spectrums though Gave a 1/3 str nutes with last watering, no damage. About 1l of water fits in the rez, and it was gone in 2 days completely, perlite was still damp but no water on the bottom, i guess its because of high evaporation? The sides of leaves started curling up a bit, not sure why is that, transpiration should be little since humidity is very high.
Hey. I'm looking to get into growing and I really like your design and am going for something similar. What size aluminium box section is that as I think that is a great cooling idea? Also with a box that size can you fully grow a plant ?
Welcome to gc dude, its a 30x30mm square section pipe 2mm thick. Actually it works great, the temps of the air around the very leds dont go above ~36 degrees celcius, and my exhaust fan positioning even works as a cooling fan, plus the pipes are mounted by magnets, so there is undisturbed heat exchange from all 4 sides. Yea, i am thinking of growing 3 plants fully in there we will see where this goes, might be that with hempy buckets this can go out of hand pretty quick, then 2 plants will stay. I have seen this strain grow before, it did not become large, and with training this should work quite well. But they are autos, if i was making 1 regular plant, it would easily fill the whole space if I was to veg it.
If you have a sec could you possibly draw a rough sketch on how you laid the LED colours out? Also just out of curiosity, what strain are you growing or is it bagseed.
No idea what the strain is called. But its no bag seed either, a buddy grew a bunch of these and also made seeds for future, so gave me a bunch as well (he made like 3k seeds total). All i know is that these should be autos and the ganj from those plants was the best i had ever gotten in my city. Also got 5 regular white widow seeds from my trip to NL, for future grows when im more experienced. There is that and some bag seed from who knows when, not putting in much hope for those, some are pale-ish.
HEy xilw3r, I sent you an email earlier with a question regarding calculating a driver, but now that I see that you actually are building your own panels (good job btw, your plants seem to be loving the environment you provided them!) I would also like to ask you how you connected your strings. If I posted a picture of one of my mini panels (like I say in the pm I will be using those for growing salad, but they could also work as supplementals), would you be able to draw me a very quick diagram of how to connect the wires? It's just 4 leds on two small aluminum bars. Finally, do you think a 60w soldering iron will damage the leds when I pre-tin them? Can I be quick and do it, or would it just fuck them up the moment I place it on the pads?
update time 13 and 11 days above soil. Did some lame ass lst. Originally i was going to use the holes on the side of the pot, but the plants are too short for that, which will change i hope When i opened the box i already could smell them lil plants. Thats great, except that i havent made my O3 generator yet. But id say i have 2 weeks untill i will be able to smell them outside the box (i already had some smelly ..things... in there, was not able to scent anything until the doors were opened) for the last 2 feedings i gave em half strength nutes npk 9-4-5 Surprisingly the smallest of the bunch is overtaking the middle one in terms of new leaf development.