I've raised the seedling up closer to the light. I've also switched the ballast up to 75%. From the tip of the container to the light is 21''. I used an old tv tray. By luck it's silver and white to reflect all that light. The light is now pushing out 450W up from the 300W it was running. A couple things I learned about adjusting the lights that was surprisingly difficult to find online, so I figured it needed repeating: -Always shut the lights off before adjusting ballast power up or down -Wait 15 min for the bulb to cool before adjusting. Shutting off the lights and restarting quickly is called a 'hot start' and could harm the bulb, lowering output and life span. They have boxes that you can plug in line to your lights so when you lose power for a brief moment there is a 15 minute cool down gap before the lamps restart. Seedlings a day ago & two days ago Seedlings today I've got two that didn't fare so well. This one's puny & not gaining size at all This one sprouted but didn't have the ability to push up through the soil. I may have buried it a little too deep, but genetics were probably the real cause. If you buy high quality seed, of course you get less of this stuff. These seeds are really just to test out the set up and serve as a contrast to the high quality seeds and clones I have coming. Other stuff: Stay organized. I keep all receipts, warrantees and instructions. My onions and parsley doing well.
This thread is pretty dead so I slacked off for a few days. Everything's been running on 24hrs so far. I could not get the mechanical timer to work. I bought a Hydrofarm digital timer for like 15 bucks off Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001BPOBTY/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Here's a pic of it with my other timers: The round one is a GE two prong with battery back up and the square one is a Brinks 3 prong with a battery backup, but the battery is dead. I used them on my prior CFL grows. I tested them for battery back up so that if there was a momentary power loss that they would start back up. The 3 prong timer did not because the battery was dead. This is critical because my Hydrofarm timer will start the lamp again, but my fan wouldn't. If this happened when I was gone it could cause some issues with quality and safety. I also cant use the smaller one because its only two prongs and I'm not going to use shady adapters. I want everything grounded that can be, safety first. Heading to the local grow store to get another Hydrofarm timer, but it will probably cost like 18 bucks. Not too bad over Amazon. I bought a CFL reflector for $7 at walmart and dug up some supplies from the CFL grow I'm trying to be prepared for an extended black out, because that sort of thing happens once every couple of years around here. I have a DC-AC inverter, but I don't have a deep cycle battery yet to power it. Here's some time lapse in the garden: I thought they were far enough away from the light to spray the leaves with water but I think the lense effect happend and I got a couple of spots from the light being concentrated through the droplets. I also performed a test using my chemical tester and my electronic tester. The results came back: I need to calibrate my ph tester. Need to get the timers set up today because I am running 18 hours - 4pm to 10am. This way the rig is powered up while I'm home most often (albeit sleeping) and off most of the time I am working. I need to get it set up so I can observe that they work correctly and I have today and tomorrow off only. That will give me the ability to see 1.5 cycles, enough to be confident everything is working appropriately. I'm also getting batteries for my little pen sized infrared thermometer. I'm going to use it to monitor temperatures throughout the electrical system (as I hope to expand & don't want my house burning down) and localised temps inside the tent. My seeds are "flo x tahoe", a specialized private strain straight from Colorado. It's a heavy indica with a hell of a bloodline. Flo is Purple Thai & Afghan Indica and Tahoe is OG Kush and SFV OG. They should be here tomorrow according to the tracking. Can't wait to see a highly refined breed compete against those old bagseeds that I've got going right now. Once the Flo x Tahoe arrives the bagseeds will be getting the same orgainic nutrient treatment. Will be a neat contrast.
Reverse Osmosis filtered water for $1 a gallon for now until the day I can afford my own filter. Bubbles My infra red temp gauge Room temp: 73 Exhaust: 78.5 Ballast exhaust: 88.5 Ballast body 80 Fan controller: 80 Surge protector: 73 Cables: 69 Top of leaves: 70 Soil: 67.5 Reflector: 73 avg, 77 max fan: 74 So as you can see, the electronics generate some heat, but as long as there's good airflow, nothings getting too far out of hand.
A) welcome to GC, great to see one other person taking the plunge into this fantastic hobby, especially for the medicinal community B ) I'm sorry to inform you your light is much too small for a 4x4 tent. 4x4 tent requires at least 1kw. but don't panic! get another 600w. 2x600w lights is always better than 1kw: more light, better coverage, easier temp control. my best suggestion to you is to order another one, especially if you want to pull a pound C) In your pic above titled "bubbles", I see airstones and tubing, but no airpump?? I see you have a submersible water pump. but where is the air? if you haven't gotten one yet, definitely get a commercial piston pump. if you cheap out and go with one of those multi-outlet aquarium pumps you'll regret it. D) I see you're going to walmart for your water? instead of paying 1 dollar for each gallon, I can tell you how to pay 1.25 for 5 gal of RO water. first, buy 5 gal jugs (your walmart should have them). then, contact glacier water and ask them where the nearest RO dispenser is by your address. they'll either tell you an address or send you a map. now you can refill your 5 gal jugs each week without having to buy a ton of 1 gal bottles. not only are you saving money, you're also reducing plastic consumption and waste. win win!!
one more thing, I don't suggest using air stones with that blue coating. the blue shit starts to wear off into your water and then the airstone falls apart. the discs are great, a general rule of thumb is to keep the stones grey. those blue ones are dogshit, I promise you.
I also noticed you got litmus strips. as a medical grower, your very best investment will be in a decent pH and EC meter. do it. If you feel like shelling out a couple bucks to really go all out on a meter, I highly suggest the Hanna 9813-6. it is an excellent meter, easy to use, very durable, and the calibration is rock-solid. along with that, it does absolutely everything I need it to. however being in soil you may not need something so fancy. the combo meters are nice though, so you take all your measurements with one probe rather than having to dip 2 or 3 different pens into a solution to determine all the values.
Labeled timers Small veg fan timer While installing my wires I tested out my back up light. It won't do anything for the growth, but what it will do is stave off the creation of the horomones that are created during dark periods. It's only for times like right now when I need to turn the lamp off during the on cycle, just to make sure the plants don't get confused. If I lose the ballast I'll need something to buy me time until I can get one in. I keep it stashed in the tent in case I need it. The electrical The extensions where the timer-Surge protector connection is made. High wattage rated. Light up when receiving power which is actually a diagnostic help if an issue occurs. I use baby-proof covers on all unused electrical outlets on the rig. I plugged one of the outlets of the fan timer, then used that to tape it to the top of the surge protector box. This will be replaced by velcro if it turns out to be a good spot for them. I have an SPL meter and thought it would be neat to see how loud the rig is. The room average was 58 decibels. Right at the intake it was 83, the exhaust 84 but inside the tent was 61. So, that's how loud a 400cfm fan with open intake/exhaust running at 20% is. If sound is a problem where you live, fan noise can be a big problem.
Wow, good call on the water pump.. Meant to get an air pump. Dumb move.. Yeah, after doing more research I think a pound is a high estimate. I will be looking to add a second light but probably not during this grow. At least the tent gives me some room to work in for now.. They have a glacier dispenser at the grocery store, but I don't have room for a very large water bottle yet. Plus my plants are tiny and aren't going through much yet. I'm hoping to gain some space in a week or two. The tent is a big obstacle in the room its in. Small oversight.
Good to know. The one with blue was just for using inside of the gallon jugs. just temporary until I got the bigger jugs that the larger air stone will fit in. But without an air pump its useless anyway at this point.
I use the I have a decently rated electric PH meter, but I was afraid it needed calibration after comparing to the liquid tester that came in the PH kit. I also have a TDS meter.
My temp/humidity gauge failed oddly this morning.. It was reading 162 degrees. It was at normal temperature inside. I left the batteries out of both peices during the entire day while at work. Batteries have been back in for a couple hours, I strung the temp sensor up, out of the direct focus of the light and it seems to be working fine. Put some of my soil together. My recipe: 2 cups Ocean Forest soil 2 cups Espoma organic soil 1 cup pearlite 1 cup vermiculite 1 cup earthworm castings .5 cup greensand 1 tsp Epsom Salt Mixed in 5 gal buckets. For the 4 plants I currently have, I will be putting them in 3 gallong pots. So I calculated about 12 gallons of soil with room to breathe. This plus this Turns to this Secure all of these With these
Got my seeds in! Feminized Flo x Tahoe indica mix that is only bred in Colorado. Damp paper towel in a ramekin sealed with plastic wrap. Popped open about 3 days later all simultaneously. Luckily I had pre-filled the cups with soil a day before. They sprouted before I went to work so I spent some time sowing them and I ended up late. I put them in solo cups and wrap each individual cup with it's own ziplock as a little greenhouse. Soil: (mixed 6 cups with 2 cups pearlite and 2 cups vermiculite) I put them under the light with the others. One didn't emerge. For the others, I think the light was too much. A day after they emerged they all seemed to show signs of stress. I immediately put them under cfl's as sort of a NICU for the little girls. I just realized I didn't get any pics of the CFL NICU rig, but it wasn't anything pretty anyway. Just my emergency light with a daylight cfl and two desklamps with soft white bulbs on them. It worked. Although they had some leaves that atrophied, they bounced back. I waited until they established their first leaves and I could see the second set forming and then put them back under the metal halide. I've also put all of the clear cups inside black cups that I cut the bottoms off of. I knew I shouldn't have used clear cups, but I didn't prepare well enough before I started and forgot the cups. Clear cups will allow algea fungus and other things to develop faster in the roots Some of the most current pics: One of the original bag seed plants with its container cover One of the injured FT seeds. One of the primary leaves atrophied: The other injured FT seed. It was just tiny, and still is tiny RIP Others Pics of my exhaust Onions and Parsley before I chopped the parsley: After: How I track my temp/humidity/height and other stuff
Amazon let me return my temp/humidity sensor and get a new one. I opted to get a replacement of the same type that I had, because it's a really good model. I just realized that it has max/min temps too! That means I can leave for work and see what the conditions were like the whole time I was gone. Pretty rad. Also, my excel spreadsheet doesn't look like much in the pic but I'm adding to it every time. It's getting more complex. If you see on the right hand side it's calculating the overall averages over time and the differences between tent and room conditions. I will be adding weekly averages as well and some other stuff. Why? Because.
Is this plant showing as a female? This is the only one that has these leaves at the internodes. The other ones all look like this:
I have since learned that no, they are not showing yet. Other things I have learned: -I put my little seedlings 2.5 ft from the 600W MH fixture at 75% (450W +/-), but it seemed to overwhelm them. I would need to conduct more research, but I starting them off in a separate smaller space with flourescents would be preferred method of starting seedlings. Exact wattage yet to know. I'm sure that info is somewhere on here already, but wanted to share my experience. -Label the cups on at least 4 sides (North West South East works better than 3 points) in order to easily ID each plant without moving it. Of course this is only if you plan to track growth/experiment. Unless you somehow grow weed and have a sharp memory, this helps. -When watering from the top, it will no doubt make divots in the soil. I fill divots in with more soil, but only if the displaced soil couldn't be leveld out nice. I've heard of people using a mulch layer. I think that's a good idea, but I haven't been able to get mulch in anything but an enormous bag I have no use for at this time of year. Right now I've experimented with glass peices normally used in ornamental flower arrangements. A single layer does no good at all and just gets in the way. So I now only have one plant that has a double layer of glass mulch. I'll see if it does any good or not when I water it later tonight. -PUT THE SEEDLINGS IN LIGHT BLOCKING CUPS. I found algea growth in one of my clear cups, and it invites a bunch of other bad things. -I'm rotating my plants 90 degrees each day so they don't have anywhere permanently shaded. Would be cool to someday have a room big enough for a light mover. -I read in Skunk magazine to water twice, half at once, half later to allow for efficiently soaking in before overload. -Scales under the pots to see how much they weigh as they grow up would be rad -Water 75% from the bottom with seedlings/clones to make the roots search for the water. Over the top lets them develop outward. -I've read that flowering with 12.5 hours on and 11.5 hours off will increase yield. I'm writing this down here in hopes that I'll remember this when it comes time to flip the switch. -Never drop the pots! It compacts the soil and ruins all the air chambers that get healthy roots.
Here's something delightful that happened recently: I got a parsley plant last summer that sat in a container on my back porch. When frost came, I brought it inside and I've been keeping it near a south-facing window to stay alive over the winter until I started my grow and moved them in the tent. It's done really well, but all of a sudden there's a problem. I found a single, teeny tiny grasshopper nymph on one of the leaves. Then another. And another. A damn grasshopper laid its eggs in the soil around my parsley plant! The warm temps and light in the tent have convinced the eggs that it's spring time, and the eggs are hatching into nymphs that emerge to feed on the host plant. Immediately I was afraid that grasshoppers lay thousands of eggs at a time and I was going to have to toss the plant or have a plague of biblical proportions inside my house. I Googled and found that (luckily) grasshoppers only lay between 7-30 eggs at a time and they hatch over a month & the nymph usually just chill on the host plant. I found 9 before I tossed the plant outside in the cold. I don't know if they would eat the MJ leaves, I'm sure some folks in the outdoor grow section would know. Either way, didn't want to risk it.
A little reworking of the electrical department: The updated water department: I turn this thing on for at least an hour before I water the plants. Still working on enough room to have a better, bigger source of water. Update on the seedlings: Before repotting: Repotted into 3 gal soft pots. 15.99 plus 7 shipping for 10. Not bad: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0099TZHAG/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Closeup of individual plants and their subsequent internodes The tiniest seedling. This one is .75 inces when the biggest one is 2.75 and the other two are around 2. It would be neat if it developed into some tiny little novelty version, but I doubt it. I'm also testing a theory. The leaves I burnt when I did a foliar spray with the lights on have all yellowed and are starting to die. It's only the middle leaf of the fan. So on one plant I left it, on the other I've cut only that finger of the leaf off. We'll see if it saves the other part of the fan for longer. You can see that is the one I'm testing out glass mulch in.
Another note - After transplant and lowering to floor hight, it seems that I'm observing stretching between nodes and not so much top growth. However, growth was pretty vigerous the first day with a half inch to full inch growth in one day (BS plants only). Increased wattage to 100% (600W). -THe ballast increased in noise output incrementally with the power increases -Noticed an increase in noise from ballast an hour after lighting -15 min later another modulation of the tone.went to a flatter tone from a sharper one. -Returned to sharp tone a half hour later (5:30pm) -Sounds normal at 6 Don't know if it's significant, but just jotting it down in case it becomes a problem later.
Wow, one thing I've got to say is that I definitely recognize a difference in the light bill.. I was averaging about 12kWh per day with just my house, spending about $65 a month. This past months bill came in and I'm averaging 27.5kWh per day and it was like $130 bucks! Definitely have to factor in the light bill in my cost-per-ounce figure I'll be calculating come harvest time. I did the math and my light will be 10.8kWh per day, plus the big fan, the little fan, the bubbler and other things, the energy usage and cost is just about right. Especially with it being winter, we use more electricity. It will probably be about the same this next month since I stepped up the ballast to full power. I expect it to go down in the summer when we use less energy, except for when I will need to install an ac in the grow room.
Update: Used an android app to measure the sound of the rig. It works great, but the free version seems to give the reading as a negative number from 100. Either way: Inside the tent: 67.3dB Outside tent (near fan): 70dB It's definitely loud now that I'm running at like 20-30% fan to cool the 600W. I topped the biggest plants. I rerouted the veg fan timer to the outside and attached an extension cord off of it to run the two (maybe 3) small fans to blow on the canopy. I attached the small fans to the upright for the tent with two zip ties each. And an update on growth: