ill heed all of your advice. ill start off with 4 plants (i guess ill have to start with more and kill the males) and roomates... i dont have any. all im worried about is no smell getting out, and having a good airflow system so that the smell is filtered and not trapped in the box. that would not be good. so you are saying it would be totally safe for me to run another 4 bullbs in y connectors in those type of ungrounded fixtures? thats all i have to know.
i think the reason your bubbler things arent working right is cuz they are completely submerged. i think there supposed to be closer to if not on the surface of the water
Can you imagine this absolutely stuffed container though with 8 plants? I don't think you would be able to remove the top, for fear of not being able to get the lid back on. However I'm not factoring in the light intensity... Maybe with such a small amount of light, more plants would be better... I have trouble making up my mind sometimes... When I know something I don't have to make up my mind, but when I'm not sure... It's just ridiculous the amount of thought that goes on. Just don't be afraid of pruning it- it shouldn't show any signs of stress even with lots of cutting. They are going to need to be tamed though... 2 might be better all around. I'll see if I can paint a good enough picture for you about the sheer importance of light intensity and amount of lumens EACH plant gets. The leaves on a plant are the energy centers, gathering light and storing food. When a plant has 30 leaves it will grow up to 3 times faster (with enough light) than a smaller plant with 10 leaves. The larger plant will also have larger leaves which= faster growth and bigger, better buds. If you have 4 plants, only 2 bulbs will be providing energy for each plant. This will slow down growth and lower the quality of the finished product. When a plant is bigger in flower, the buds will be bigger and better. The reason is, there is more plant to take in energy and use it. I think 2 plants would be best after I thought about it a lot. You need 4 bulbs per plant to grow dank. You owe it to yourself to have funkier weed, and all that means is less plants so the plant can get enough energy to produce dank nugget. And I don't know if that timer will handle the load... I would get another timer just to be safe. Something with a ground.
If i can offer you some advice, i would buy one of these maybe even 2 because they're mad cheap considering other sites list these CFL's for like 100. 125 watts! http://www.farmtek.com/farm/supplies/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10052&storeId=10001&productId=65628&langId=-1&division=FarmTek&pageId=ItemDetail&parent_category_rn=&top_category=&breadcrumb_trail=&breadcrumb_categoryIds=&isDoc=
ok. ill start looking for a grounded timer, and most likely, ill buy one after i move out of my house again. ill get 4 bulb splitters and 4 more bulbs, again, when i go back to school. what i may do now is redesign my pot situation a little bit. ill go buy some bigger pots and another set of lids to cut and mess with, as they are cheap. and can anyone confirm what hitmanbob said, because as far as ive seen in original bubble bucket DWC setups, the airstones are still at the bottom of the tank. maybe the ones i got werent the best choice?
damn. when i get some more money, maybe ill pick up 4 of those badboys for the box, but id need some serious ventilation id imagine.
That's the idea! More light, more ventilation, more circulation, more oxygen in the root zone= awesome yeild.
ok. so, my last question is, with DWC, how close am i going to want the top of my water to be to the bottom of the pots? obviously, they need to be close enough so that the spray from the bubbles will keep the entire root system hydrated, but at the same time, i dont think they are supposed to be totally submerged. from what i read in the "bubble bucket how-to thread" i couldnt see anything about standard water level in these systems. also, will i need additional airstones or should the 2 i have be enough?
You should add another dual port air pump just to be safe. If you get the bigger lights you can go with the 4, but if not you should only grow 2 with that much light. You will thank us later!
im sure i will ill be gettin more light tho. maybe even something better, like HPS or HID. i may have more money in a few weeks, like thousands more, so... yea.
at home depot, they were originally work lamps with bulb reflectors, but i took those off, easily i might add, then removed the clips and voila, lamps on powercords.
what about an 8 or hell a 6 plant SOG?? I dunno just a thought props though nice setup and alot of thought use the Y connectors they will be fine really 4 23 watt cfls = 1 100 watt incandescent so they are pulling as much power as 1 100 watt inc. I have an "older house and the wiring is old and I have a ton of shit on 1 timer and 1 outlet and my ..house is still standing....... well so far at least... way fuckin fire hazard ... ahh fuck it
Im right there with you my house was built in the late 40's and I also fear that I will come home to a burning house because Of the electricity Im using.
so i got a bunch of y adapters, one MOFO CFL and a bunch more smaller onese. i think this should be enough for at least 2 or 3 mature plants. i also coated the inside of the light part of the box in heat insulating aluminum tape. i think it came out good. bare in mind the glare in the photos is from the flash, the CFL's were not on at any point.
3- 4 computer fans i think. i still need to get all that stuff, but itll take me a day to finish building it all and i still dont have nutrients rockwool or grow medium yet, so im still a few weeks away. im still puzzled over the airstones. i wonder if i shoudl get a bigger air pump, or two maybe.
You should have a dual port air pump for every 5 gallons of water storage at least. I use Rapid Rooter plugs instead of rockwool, I like them a lot. They let you know when they are drying out from the color they are. They also don't hold as much water as rockwool which I like. You should try them out. Add as many fans as possible, a couple up top for intake and to cool the lights and a few down below to exhaust, that would be tight. Can't wait to see how it turns out! Good luck!
ok thats a great idea for fan placement. maybe if i can pull it off, ill keep the lights behind some acrylic or pvc and make a cool tube type setup. ill also look into the rapid rooters, althouh i only need one or two rounds, since i plan to grow from clones after the first grow. so what your saying is for every 5 gal i need a dual port pump... so with these 18 gal boxes i have, ill need something that will essentially be 3 times MORE powerful than whats rated for that size tank? i have these air stones (2) - http://www.petsmart.com/global/prod...1186942056951&itemNo=3&In=Fish&N=2030092&Ne=2 and i have this pump - http://www.petsmart.com/global/prod...29&itemNo=0&In=Fish&N=2030090+4294966882&Ne=2 the pump is the XP-60 rated for above what i hvae, its got two outlets and seems pretty good, but jsut doesnt bubble enough. maybe im missing the concept of DWC here, but arent the bubbles supposed to pop with enough force to spray the roots with water, not just aerate the reservoir?
Those ratings are for fish tanks, you can get away with less air but it is part of the most important aspects of growing. Trust me, I tried to skimp on it and my whole root system died in late flower. They need a lot more oxygen than a fish tank, and having more than one plant in the water really adds to the need for more oxygen. Lucas, the hydro master who came up with the famous Lucas Formula (which I TOTALLY recommend you try for ease of use and steady ph!) recommends at least a watt of air pump power for every gallon of storage. Those pumps are about 6 watts or so I think, so 1 for every 5 gallons of storage would be fine. However it's just like the light and ventilation- the more oxygen in the root zone the faster and better the growth, just like the more light and ventilation the faster and better the growth. You can not overkill these areas, the more the better. Although there is a point where more isn't as noticeable, it's not until you are at a point where you think you have enough, then added more for good measure. Rumpleforeskin, the bubblebucket guru with the ballin custom closet uses huge 4 port dual diaphram air pumps on his buckets- they are like 3 psi, about 3 times a dual port pump from walmart. You could try a waterfall technique but it might be too loud for your closet... You could get it to work though and you wouldn't need a single airpump. It's definitely really cool, have you heard about it? The fans and airpumps will make noise anyways, a little waterfall might not be that bad, especially if you covered the reservoir the waterfall went into. But trust me, it's one of the coolest aeration techniques I've ever come across- and it makes it possible to have a seperate reservoir to adjust the ph and mix nutrients in- so you don't have to lift the plants out of their reservoir at all. Are you interested at all? I could definitely show you how to make your's into one for relatively cheap- actually less than it would cost to buy more airpumps probably.