400W, 5gal bucket, Home made tent, 2nd DWC

Hello everyone, decided to start up a journal after I feel like I finally got a system down, I hope that is haha. I'm using a 400watt, air cooled hood, with a carbon scrubber. The lights cooled by a cage fan, it's a little over kill for my tent so I installed a dimmer, I run it at about 70% power. I'm growing in two plants, each in its own 5 gallon bucket DWC system. Each bucket has it's one air pump, each one is rated for a 60 gallon fish tank. Attached to the back right support rod is a small 4 inch fan directed down toward to plants for air circulation. On the back bottom of the tent I have two openings both filtered with black air conditioner mesh. Hanging in the side is a digital temp gauge that records lows and high, as well as humidity. All of that sits in my home made tent. I made it out of a simply wardrobe closet from Walmart. I cut it down a bit because I have a low cealing. I lined it with black/white plastic, with the from flap removable by velcrow. And the I slid the wardroom covering back over to give it that innocent look. The air is directed threw the wall into the addict. I also have another room were I keep the a mom and hydro cloner. Right now I have two clones in the buckets in plain ph'ed water with no nutes, once roots start to touch water I'll add a half strength nute solution the. Gradually moving to full strength. I try to keep the ph around 5.9, the the average temp is around 78-80 degrees. And I'm using general hydroponics veg and flower powder nutes.



Here's the veg room with my mom and hydro cloner, along with a few new moms in the works. The light pictured is a home made good I put together. It uses two 25watt cfls and on top is a PC fan to control the heat.

 

I found them at menards a couple years ago. The brand is aerotech and they advertise as "full spectrum lighting," that it puts out red and blue light pretty much. But to me it looks like it gives a "daylight glow." Those are 25watt (100watt replacement) I bought two year ago and they work great. I've tried a lot of different brands and these seem to work the best by far.

 

Here's and update. So far everything is going smoothly. I added some general hydroponics veg powder (2 tbsp) to each bucket, within the first day they already started to get a darker shade of green. Ph is 5.9-6.2. The veg room is also going great, the mom's looking great, clones and new moms as well.

 

It's been a while since I updated but I'm back! Today I changed the res's today and installed a new net I built last night. Goin to fill out the net for maybe another week then switch to flowering.

 

Hey everyone, sorry its been so long since my last post/update. I've been taking pictures a long the way but have been slacking when it came time to actually post them. So here's a quick list of everything. I vegged the two plants for 14 days. I was able to completely fill my home made net and then some. During veg I only used phed water and General Hydroponics veg powder. When it came time to flower I switched to General Hydroponic Bloom powder (Both powders and base nutrients). During flowering i also have been using Botanicare Cal Mag supplement along with a Botanicare "Sweet" Carbohydrate. So far everything's going pretty well. This time around I held way back on trimming and kinda let the plants do there own thing. so far it looks pretty good. I switched to 12/12 on 4/21/14. So I'm almost a month into flowering now. Off the top of my head that's all i got, but any questions, comments, concerns feel free to speak up. 
 

 

The blue tent pictured above is a Veg tent i build in order to keep everything together in one, air conditioned room. Instead of a tent and an addict space. I did the same thing as the flower tent. Bought an inexpensive wardrobe closet and lined it with reflective black and white plastic. then simply put the cotton cover back over it. Inside is my mom, a new mom in the works, and a downsized micro bubble cloner i built in order to save . I don't know how well the new one works yet but I put a fresh set of clones in a few days ago so in the next week or so I hope to see results. All the lights shown in the old veg room have just been moved into the tent. 
 

 

Hey everyone, here's a quick update. I'm not 5 weeks into flowering and so far so good. ive been continuing to use the General Hydroponics flower base with the Botanicare Calmag and carb supplement's. I've just been flowing the instructions on the back threw out the grow. I don't have a PPM meter but the guys at the hydro store said as long as i keep an eye on the Ph and follow the feeding instructions that i should be fine. And because of the net and set up I'm using its hard to completely change out the water so I've just been topping of the buckets. In the last couple days how ever i started to notice spots starting to form on the leafs. I know it's not mites because I've had them before and already inspected for them. I keep the PH around 5.6-6.0. Thinking it could be salt build up i just added ph'ed water yesterday with no nutes to maybe see if that could help the problem. and it seemed to double the keef over night. I was going to wait till tonight when the lights turn back on the see if i can possible flush the water out and start with fresh water and nutes but I;m still not sure what the problem is. Can anyone help me out?