400w cab...let's see what happens.

Hi all... Have been meaning to post for a little while now, but time has been flying by and all of the sudden I don't even know where the last month went. Oh well, lets you guys skip right to the exciting part...time to flower. My setup: Home made cab, is 6ft tall, has a shelf on the top housing a home made carbon filter, which is attached with dryer ducting to the air cooled yieldmaster II hood. The ballast is a 400w lumatek which is kept on the shelf at the top. With the hood and shelf there is not much height, but the cab itself is 2.5x2.5ft so we've got a little room on the side to work with. I'll put some pictures up as soon as camera battery is charged (a stoner who has two digital cameras most likely has two dead batteries...) Exhaust fan is a 500cfm (think) 7" fan, passive intake, and a 9"(i believe) fan on the floor of the cab giving the girls a breeze. My Plants: Unfortunately I cannot really tell you how long I have been vegging the two of them for, time has flown by and I didn't think to write the date they sprouted down, but it has been about a month, during which some serious LST has taken place. I started vegging them with 5 of the largest watt CFLs that walmart sells, until I got the ballast in the mail (about two weeks ago). The genetics are 2 Seedsman Skunk #1 fem. grown from seed. I chose them as it is my first grow in a couple years and I wanted something easy to get me back into it, which it has accomplished.Switched to bloom nutes and 12/12 yesterday, changing the MH out for an HPS today. Nutes are the Fox Farm trio (grow big, big bloom, and tiger bloom) and soil is Fox Farms Ocean Forest (of course). Had some problems with gnats, but some hydrogen peroxide, sticky tape, and perlite seems to have kept them at bay. have three pics for you, managed to snap them before the camera turned off on me. Questions or comments, love to hear them.

 

awesome thanks man...ur ladies r lookin pretty fine, would not mind at all to see similar results. I do plan to continue LST into flowering, just taking a break to let them get some hight, the more I tie down the more branches come up, and I was gettin worried once they went into flower there would be no room to give the branches some space. I'll have to put new pics up soon...they are looking spectacular since I threw the HPS in, some of the smaller branches have practically doubled in size! So i've been trying to figure out what strains to go with next, I want them to be similar so they are around the same height, although with LST this is less of a problem. I'm thinking about going with three, and at the moment i'm thinking maybe: NY City Diesel, AK47, and maybe strawberry blue under world of seeds legends collection. Anyone have experience with these strains? I'm looking for knockout potency but I want something tasty. Suggestions?

 

Ok so it's about 8 days since I turned to 12/12 and the ladies have been exploding with growth. There are some mutants I forgot to mention last time, have some good pictures of them now, one branch on each plant has an exceptionally thick stem, with leaves coming in sets of three or four as opposed to two. One of them actually separated into two branches with no topping or fim'ing on it at all. These branches should produce some interestingly thick buds! Last watering I dosed them with some Open Sesame (fox farms) so hopefully we'll see some big budsets soon. Enjoy the pics...

 

quick update: Everything is going smoothly. I put in some pictures of the cab this time too. Started hitting them with Open Sesame, alternating between open sesame and liquid karma, big bloom tiger bloom and liquid karma, and just straight water with liquid karma (if you haven't been able to tell...i think liquid karma is the shit. They seem to be lovin the nute regimen...every time I go in there I have to cut handfuls of leaves out to thin the canopy, and the next day the canopy is thicker than it was the day before! It's impossible to keep up with, which is awesome, but I am making a good effort so that the lower branches get plenty of light too. It's been really cold here lately, so I lowered the lights a good 4 inches last night, and today they had both responded extremely well. Anyway, onto the pics...enjoy!

 

Damn! So far not many responses...hopefully that will change with these pictures. Whipped out the fish-eye lens today...i do believe that this is a beautiful plant and close up pictures of buds tend to do it justice. Buds have finally started to make an appearance! I'm psyched for them to start filling out, these plants are going to be beasts! I plan on taking a few clones soon to help even the canopy (and keep the strain alive!). Am in the process of converting a cheap wood shelf kit into a seed/clone starter box...will have some pics up when i'm done. Have decided on some new strains for the next grow. I'm going to give the skunk clones to my brother to keep alive and start with some new feminized seeds. I got the new pack that greenhouse seeds offers; the seeds have a coating on them with rooting hormones, so they should germinate faster! I got the indica mix H, which includes one of each: Lemon skunk, Great White Shark, White Rhino, Trainwreck, and Cheese. I also got a 5 pack of reg power skunk and one fem Gigabud as freebies. In addition i purchased a single fem Paradise seeds Whiteberry. I'm thinking about doing the Whiteberry, Trainwreck, and White Rhino first, as Trainwreck and Rhino are classics I've wanted to experiment with for a while, and Whiteberry just sounds delicious! If anyone has experience with any of the strains I bought give me a shout, would love to hear/see what the end product will be. Enjoy the pics!

 

thanks for the good words! In building the box I wanted the ballast outside the grow area for heat management purposes, but wanted everything contained in the box. The exhaust for the light runs through the shelf to exhaust, so heat from the ballast is also pushed into the room (great for me...oil heat is expensive!) An open window on the side of the box where the intake is allows for cool air to be taken in, and hot air to be exhausted into my room, heating it up...the setup got closer to ambient temperatures with the aircooled hood (temps went down when switching from CFL to MH!) and stay around a solid 74 degrees F with the HPS, and have yet to see it even reach 80. The exhaust fan is so good that the hood over the light doesn't even got hot.\ GGMAN: i noticed in ur log u have the same ballast as me...are you using an air coolable hood? If you have heat problems they are a blessing, I've been moving my light closer as the temps were dropping below 70F(much lower than I expected when shoving a 400W HID into a 2.5wx2.5h ft box)!

 

there is a carbon scrubber, a box that is in a frame on the shelf (it was to tight a fit and didnt go all the way in, you can see black tape that seals it all off.)
when the door is latched all the way shut there is no smell, and they smell pretty dank when i open the cab.
my advice: Be proactive with the exhaust fan, as you and I have both learned that it's better to have a solution before a problem (everything on this grow was put together last minute out of necessity, i wish i had prepared better would have saved a lot of time).
I can't recommend enough getting a reflector that is air cooled. You can exhaust right through the reflector, keeping the temps optimum (although some higher temps might not hurt the plants, the definitely grow faster under optimum conditions) and allowing you to keep the light a lot closer to the plants, which equals more compact growth, fatter buds, and better yield!
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays by the way!

 

ok so...more pics! I meant to post these last night, but something distracted me...a bong, or something similar, and I forgot. anyway, the clone cab is in the works, about to make a move and try to finish it, not sure how i'm going to work ventilation, but i'm thinking about just drilling holes and doing something with mylar that is painted black on one side to cover the holes and still allow for air flow...wish me luck. I'm thinking some cheap computer fans for ventilation, but i'll see what i can find around, will just be some small CFL's for now, maybe some bigger ones once the seeds are started if I havent made the cab available yet. I've been looking around and have pretty much set myself on going with the trainwreck, white rhino, and whiteberry for the next round, unfortunately with only one seed of each there is little room for error, but i'm not so worried, this run I germ'ed 2 for 2, and so far so good.

 

thanks for the love... the mutants are my favorite. I cant wait to see what the buds look like when they start to mature, they're going to be thick! There are many dank white hairs visible, there were only a few in the pictures, but in the last two days they have really started to show, i'll have more pics tomorrow (on my way out to a new years party-happy new years) The clone cab is in my bedroom, stealthiness is not a huge concern as it is short and wont be noticeable with a box or something similar infront of it. I'll be sowing the seeds as soon as I get them, ordered them from Attitude, probably looking at about a week. I'll most likely take the clones tomorrow, don't want to wait much longer, if there's a decent sized bud I'll never be able to bring myself to chop it off. Also plan on buying a UVB light for the grow, going to see what the local pet shops have to offer. Anyone have experience with a specific kind? Not sure which ones to go with, the longer floro tubes or the ones that are more like CFLs. Thanks for checkin in, more updates to come soon!

 

ok, so decided to go with the UVB light, actually 2. Went to the local pet store and found the 10% 26w UVB CFLs. Bought two so I can get even coverage over the canopy. Anyone that has experience with these let me know! I'm pumped to see what kind of a difference it makes. I uploaded more pics of the buds too, hopefully you can see the hairs a little more clearly, more are popping out every day. Also seeing more and more trichs by the day! Cloning cab is almost done, also bought everything I need to build a little bubble cloner to fit a few clones, pics to come most likely tomorrow when everything gets finished. Enjoy the bud porn!

 

thanks! I believe 10% denotes the percent of the output which is actually in the UVB range. they produce 10% UVB and 30% UVA. I would assume the remaining 60% is the spectrum of a regular CFL, but haven't read to closely (it seems as though the 10% is the highest % you can find) I also saw the youtube video THC, UVB, and Me, along with posts by august west and the infamous mister postman, and had been thinking about implementing for a while but forgot until recently. Thanks for the love, was actually on my way to comment on your grow when i saw that you responded...the best is yet to come!

 

So I have to admit I'm pretty dissappointed, as I thought i posted an update earlier but apparently I only previewed it and forgot to actually reply. Anyway, when I put the UVB lights in I had to turn off the HPS to put everything on the timer, so i got some bud pics with the big light off. Makes a huge difference on picture quality.

As far as trimming, i've gotten to the point where I can trim off a pile of leaves and still feel that if I kept at it i'd expose even more budistes. They're so bushy that branches seem to be coming out of nowhere. I trimmed leaves on the bottom as well so that the airflow to the buds would be better. Had I not done this a whole lot of the leaves would be stuck in the dirt by now.
There has definitely been an increase in trich coverage since I installed the UVB lights, i'm loving it. Hopefully in the next couple days i'll be able to get more pics with the light out so you can see how far they've come in the last couple days, it's awesome.
Anyway, here's the pics. Meant to post them last night but got kind of wasted at the bar and forgot.

 

So it looks like the top of one of the plants went a little hermie, its right next to where the door is and I think some light was getting in because I kept forgetting to attach the latch I have on the bottom so there may have been a small leak. It's only showing on one bud so far, all the way at the top, the pics of the accused hermie are the first three attachments. anyone? this look like a hermie?

More pics included too, buds are starting to fill out and look real nice.