The Setup: Seeds - $50 6x Sugar Haze - Seedsman 6x White Rhino - Nivarna 4x4ft Grow Tent - $150 Will get afew more for flowering and cloning later in grow. 2x 50x3W LED Veg Lights - $280 total LED Configuration 38 blue 460nm 8p white 14000k 2 orange 610nm 2 red 630nm Watering Drip systems 5x10gal Storage Containers, $40 5x 2x1ft trays, $40 Vinyl Tubing, mainfolds, drippers etc $50 2xPumps $20 Mediums 1" Rockwool cubes x77 $15 12gal perlite $30 Nutes Dutch master gold one, 1/2gal $30 Instruments Thermometers, Hygrometers, Ph Meters, EC meters around $60 A lot of misc stuff I haven't listed as well, spend around $800 so far. Day 1 Germinating seeds in the cups with tap water. I left it to sit for afew hours to evaporate some of the chlorine (my citys levels aren't that bad), then added a bit of vinager, lowering ph to 5.5. They've there for afew hours now. Day 2 Vinegar is a useless ph down, it just evaporates quickly and ph goes right up again. Couldn't find phosphoric, but got some hydrochloric acid from hardware store and lowered it down to 5.5, my solution has been pretty stable for the last 12 hours. I've drenched the rockwool cubes in the solution and not sure how often to water it, I think I'll let it dry up abit before I water again. The seeds are now in the rock-wool under one of the lamps (18/6 photo period) and I'm now nervously waiting for sprouts to appear. I've noticed it's about 5 degrees hotter and 10% higher humidity in the tent than the room without ventilation. Fuck those lamps are bright, just walked out of that tent after half an hour of work and everything seems extra red, im trippin balls here :S I think I need sunglasses to work in my tent, lol. I just need afew more bits and pieces and chain then I'll have both lights hanging up in there real close to the plants. Day 3 Still waitin on dem' sprouts, cubes still real wet and haven't watered them today Also inb4 the guy that says 'leds are shit', I've done my research and I'm more concerned with g/W yield than g/plant either way.
looking nice! but in all honesty, i would try to get real ph up and down...a 8 oz kit is like 15 bucks....im not so sure about hydrochloric acid from a hw store is quite the same shit we use....im just saying....not sure if thats the best thing to use for a down....
Aparently most commercial ph downs are just watered down phosphoric acid, which seems ideal as if it breaks down it would break down into a nutrient the plant uses, although this could screw up the balance of the nuts and cause problems if it's too much, but I think it would break down too slow to matter either way. My hw store hcl is meant to be for pools so it's in very high (dangerous) concentration, I just need to water it down without spilling it on myself or inhaling the fumes D: . Hcl can break down into chlorine and hydrogen, but it seems in very small amount, I think there is already way more chlorine than that in the tap water anyway. I'm much more worried about the ph being too high/low. We all drink the phosphoric acid in coca cola anyway, and we have stomachs full of hydrochloric acid, so in low concentrations I doubt either are that bad.
it is good to see active members here to help though man not much for me to do atm but wait and pray for them to sprout
Day 4: Watered cubes again today, with ph 5.3 solution, still no sprouts. Mabye it's just taking a while cos my temps are low, it ranges from 60-80F and 40-50% r/h in the tent. 3 days plus one day pre-germ and no sprouts is kinda getting me worried, i've read of seeds sprouting faster than this.. Also sorry I didn't include a pic, thought I did in the start of the thread but the tag was broken, direct upload below. Pic of setup:
Tagging along for the ride on this one. I've only run one flower cycle with my LED's so far, but the results weren't bad. I have noticed though that to keep them low to the plant (higher light intensity) I needed to use a mover, otherwise the lights bleached the leaves pretty bad. Eventually I'll give them another run, but for now I'm playing with t5's, and I'm very happy with the results. Best of luck on the grow!
Thanks for the support man Today I'm getting more chains etc and will lower both lights right down there, will research into movers as well, would I need them for veg though?
wow those lights are blue! Curiouse to see how they preform. Poppin a squat on this one to see what happens! Goods lucks.
Day 5: - Lowered the lights and set up second one, will post pic after I'm done my watering system too - 1 tiny and 1 larger white rhino sprout nearing surface visible - 3 tiny sugar haze sprouts nearing surface visible - I think I planted one of the haze upside down though, either the seed is heaving itself out of the rockwool or the sprout is curling around the bottom of the seed, or abit of both. Messing with it now though seems like a bad idea :S Hopefully the extra light will help it orient itself. Also, caring for my babies high is pretty fun, and I've been smoking a sativa strain i managed to get my hands on, so it hasn't really interfered with my work This is why I want that damn sugar haze! 90% sativa, apparently the 10% indica it's crossed with only affects the way they grow, not the high, no sedative effect at all unless i mix it with some rhino. Hydro sativas are so rare in my city, and in the day I want to be hardworking AND a stoner. The white rhino is just for nights and is probably going to get me couch-locked as fuck The extra light also ramped up the temp, it's now 7 degrees above room temp, which should hopefully speed things up. To keep temp and humidity up, I'm not venting it yet. Ikr! I wore sunglasses today and I'm still seeing extra red on my screen after working in there, or mabye I'm just really high, LOL.
LED's are a great advancement in indoor gardening, but they definitely need some fine tuning yet as far as which wavelengths are included. The big problem with them yet is that they lack the penetration of HID lighting. However, what they lack there, they make up for in lumens per watt, and a very low heat signature. That being said, they're great for small grows, stealth grows and anything where heat/noise in an issue. Scrog is recommended to eliminate the penetration issue. Obviously with the low heat, you can get them very close to the plants without worrying about actually burning your tops. Getting them close also increases the light intensity to the plant, but the lights are very directional. What I found was once I dropped my lights to past six inches from the tops, I got spotty bleaching from the intensity of the light. As soon as I put in the mover, the new growth was a healthy green again. You don't NEED the mover for either flower or veg, BUT if you want to keep the lights as close as possible, just keep an eye out for leaves turning white. If they do, a mover will fix it. A decent one only costs a couple hundred. With any luck, you wont have any issues, and you wont need it. Excited to watch this grow man. Sorry for rambling... Got out of work two hours ago and may have taken the "relaxing" a bit too seriously, lol.
Well from what you say light movers seem pretty expensive for such a simple mechanical device, I would rather move them abit further away and purchase more lights Not to mention maintaining the things would just complicate my grow, I dunno how I'd set one up on those horizontal tent poles I hang the chains on I've got both lights 5" above the plants now, I'm not lowering them any further as I've learned small gaps are very impractical to work with when watering and looking after the plants. Seriously if they were any closer they'd be raping the plants lol. And yes the heat is lower than traditional bulbs but there isn't zero heat, it's still pretty warm directly under the lamp (tent=8 degrees hotter than room) and I don't wanna make the top of my plants too hot.
I'm running the lights 4pm-8am to maximize heat at night as I was worried about the outside temps which get as low as 40F/5C, but I'm learnt my place has extremely good insulation when I close the windows at night and it doesn't really ever drop below 60F in the room now. Temp is now pretty stable between 65F-75F (18-23C). Humidity is ranging around 40-60%. When the lights are off I open all the windows. I'm in Australia so it's getting hotter now soon though \t\t Guess what? One of my white rhino's have now broken through the surface
Day 6: I go check on the grow and all of a sudden half have sprouted fuck yeah -4 White Rhino sprouted, 1 nearing surface real slow (right tray) -3 Sugar Haze sprouted, nothing from others yet (left tray) Watered again with ph 5.6 water
Nice. Good sign early on! Still can't get over those blue lights Got another plan for when flowering time comes?
I'm hoping of purchasing 1-3 more similar grow tents in the next 3 months and 2-3 300W LED flower lights. Also wanting to make my veg tent(s) two grows vertically stacked next harvest, and the DIY part of that might be abit complicated :l I'm worried I'll only get 1 mother each and it would take too long to make heaps of clones, I'm hoping to get at least 2 mothers each strain.. Yeh they look fucking badasss too, looks like some kinda pc gaming setup
Day 7: 1 More sugar haze sprouted, slowly, 2/3 of the seeds have sprouted now. Watered again, will have to pay more attention now as the intense light is increasing the temperature to max 80F in the early evening, and raising the humidity to 60% when I water, and the cubes seem to require water every day now. Hopefully will get the drip irrigation set up soon, and ventilation. I've been opening the grow tent's flap at night for afew hours and it cools the tent down 5 degrees and warms up my whole place abit, lol. EDIT: nm, it won't be that hot again for afew weeks. So the math looks alrite now. I can see 1 more white rhino approaching the surface, but the other rhino and the 2 haze might not be sprouting. So my odds of 2 mothers each are pretty good now, but I've still got decent chances of only getting one.
Day 12: Seedlings not doing much, just establishing roots and first true set of leaves are now pretty decent sized. Set up my watering system today. Kind of annoying for rockwool though it falls apart easily when I stick the drippers in, hopefully will be better with some bigger pots.