Biggie's First Grow (DWC Buckets - 400w MH/HPS) Daily Updates!! Will Need Help

HI GC

this is my first grow. I'm using dwc buckets. This is a sort of progressive grow, as in I'm short on cash and I'll be adding stuff as I get paid. I'm using bag seed simply because this is my first grow and I figure if I can get one female I can clone the shit out of her. I'm buying some seed too for my next grow (i'm thinking of staggering my grows so I might buy that seed very soon)

Onward to what I've done so far and the pictures i have

jan 14 - began 30-50 seeds germinating
jan 16 - plant 25 into rockwool.
^this, I think I made a mistake with. I didn't soak for more than 2 minutes, and it was in regular distilled water, not pH adjusted. Havent seen any real adversity come from it yet though
jan 18 - introduce light (previously in continuous darkness) in the form of a 13w 2ft fluoro built into the bookshelf in my living room. 24/0.

jan 21 - seedlings starting to peek out. picture below

jan 22 - toss all unsprouted cubes and extremely weak plants. put the six strongest under a 55w cfl in a desk lamp (like pictured below, but only one is active at this point) and keep about 10 others under the 2ft fluoro

jan 23 - throw up the other 55w cfl
jan 24 - notice that growth has slowed, high logic tells me they are tired from growing so much so fast so i switch to 18/6 (lights off 1am, on 7am)
jan 26 - my 400w MH arrives at around 6pm and i get really anxious to use it so i get it set up, i build my buckets, put 1/2 strength lucas formula and plant my four strongest plants and put them under the MH for the rest of the day. I toss the weakest few and transplant six others into larger rockwool cubes and put them under the cfls.
jan 27 - i put the rockwool above the water level, which is just over the bottom of the net pot keeping the bottom layer of hydroton wet, so I have been using a turkey baster to take some nutrient solution out of the bucket and squirting it back over the rockwool and hydroton twice a day. also have some solution in a water bottle that I have been manually watering the cubes under my cfls with twice a day. I'm not sure if any of this is necessary but i figure it can't hurt.
jan 28 - i did the same procedure as yesterday and i'm not seeing any real significant growth. here are pictures of where I'm at right now. I hope you guys can offer some insight on if everything is going right so far. The pictures might look like they have some yellowing or discoloration, but that's just the light. all plants have a really good green color. no roots through the pots yet.

the ones in bigger rockwool under the two cfl desklamps


plant "a" has larger bottom leaves than the rest but much shorter second set. is this a problem?

plant "d" has a leaf that is kind of flapping over itself. seems fine

the mh

the four buckets. the way i've been naming them, this picture has the plants arranged
CA
DB


Thanks for looking! Please post anything on your mind about my grow. I'll have a very close eye on this thread and will probably be posting daily picture updates. I'll also take any picture requested. I have a camera but i've been using my cell phone to take these because I'm too lazy to figure out the drivers but if detailed pics are needed I'll get it figured out.

peace

 

okay big updates. on the plants i have under the CFLs, there are already roots going through the big rockwool. i'm not sure what i can do with them, i was expecting this to take long enough for me to get lots more lights. i may just get a larger tray and lay them on a bed of hydroton and keep watering until i can pick up some t5s or something. any suggestions? here are pics of those girls:




and i moved the buckets up quite a bit. here's where they are now

plant b

plant a

plant d

and the new height

 

its fucking empty in here. anyway here's today's picture update on all the girls.

plant A



plant B



plant C



plant D



and the ones under the cfls i will name 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.


plant 1



plant 2



plant 3



plant 4



plant 5




and my analysis:

plants 1-5 will be put on a bed of hydroton and watered with nute solution 3x a day soon after i make this post. they already recieved 1 watering. that is the temporary solution to buy time for me to get about 300w of CFLs in there with the MH and more buckets/airpumps. The plan is to have 9 buckets in a 3x3 pattern instead of the 4 buckets in a 2x2 pattern im working with now.

all plants seem to have shown growth and all are looking very healthy. there are still no roots coming out of the netpots

i changed the burgundy sheet to white soon after the pics in this thread were taken. i think i'll be moving my grow from the middle of the room to a corner and using black plastic instead to make them completely light-tight from the rest of the room soon so that i won't have any trouble when its time to build a flowering room.

anyway thanks for looking. post if you have an opinion. i'll keep this thread updated.

 

whats up gc, i see i'm still the only one in this thread

heres todays update. sorry its a little late me and snack had to get lights and stuff. also got some ph strips (cant afford a meter yet) and noticed we were pretty low. it was around 5.0 when we checked it around 4pm, we adjusted it to about 5.3 or 5.4. going to bump it up a little more tomorrow, i didn't want to take any risk raising it a lot fast

anyway here are the girls today.

A


B


C


D


and 1-5 in their temporary new home until we get buckets tomorrow


thanks again for looking

 

i have some kind of burn. idk if it's nute or heat

its not hot in the grow space but i have a 400w mh about 18" from the plants. i have been using 1/2 strength lucas formula (4ml micro 8ml bloom per gallon

here are the pics. i caught it pretty early, they were looking great last night.

 

i emptied and re-filled the reservoirs with 1/4 solution. i'll go 1/8 if it doesnt improve or gets worse. also put a fan in there to keep it cool (they needed one anyway)

hopefully things will be looking better tomorrow.

 

well its been a few days and we've been struggling with nute burn and heat burn (plants were left too close to the cfls for a day and one died and one had part of its leaf crack off) but what we have now doesn't look bad. Here's what we're working with now!

plant A



B



C



D



and the new cfl setup



and 1-4 (i lost track of which was which, but one died)

1 (the burn victim)



2



3



4



sorry for taking a couple days the batteries died in the camera.

let us know your thoughts

 

hey guys. big update (actually 2 or 3 of them) today. lots of pics.

so the girls that were in the tote on the bed of rockwool, i have transplanted to buckets. I'll let the pics do the talking for now. i have pics of 2/6 and 2/8

2-6-11

plant A



B



C



D



1



2



3



4



and the 6th is like day 2 of visible roots and they are fucking huge. here's a sneak peek (plant C / 2-6)



anyway, i bought a bunch of buckets and meshpots and airpumps and the like and took plants 1, 2, 3, and 4 from being set up like this:



to adding them to my others, changing my setup to this:





i thought it was a big improvement, no more watering!

on any account, you might notice my homemade CFL fixtures. i'll go a bit more into those.

the first one i made is this one:

contains:

1 x 55w 3---k
1 x 42w 2700k
2 x 26w 6500k



and the other contains:

1 x 55w 3---k
1 x 42w 2700k
2 x 26w 6500k
2 x 13w 5000k



i also put a very slight lean on the MH's reflector to include the new plants in its footprint, though it's still only optimal for A, B, C, and D. The CFLs should be supplemental enough for now, i hope.

moving on, now that you know the new setup, here are the girls as of about an hour ago 2/8/11

A



B



C



D



1



2



3



4



i think they're doing well.


thanks for checking out my grow and please leave your comments!!

 

todays update



plant A



b



c



d



1



2



3



4 was my smallest plant, so i decided to use it to try topping, because i wanted to try topping lol. heres the current state



and a quick root update

plant c



and b



thats all for today folks, thanks for dropping by

 

here's another double update

2/11/11

A


B


C


D


1


2


3


4



and today, 2/14

A


B


C


D


1


2


3


4


I think 4 responded really well to being topped. the recovery took a couple days but all is looking well. My ph is starting to rise (it's at about 6.0 or 6.1 right now) so I think tomorrow I will give new water and nutes.

as always, thanks for dropping in and feel free to leave your thoughts

EDIT FORGOT ROOTS LOLOL

heres what the roots look like on the 6" mesh pots


and the 8in mesh lids


also, check out the reason i forgot to post the root shots (grape ape)

 

i have foil tape over the ones i got from home depot (the 3 orange, and the 1 white) because they are translucent but the matte gray lowes buckets didn't have any light escape when a flashlight was placed over it.

yes each bucket is single. I don't understand your question though. I have a spare bucket I use to add nute solution. I fill it with the proper strength ph balanced solution and then simply switch the top, then clean out the bucket i switched from and repeat the process. I don't see a point where this won't work anymore

good to have you here badfish. your grows are pretty sweet