ok so this is my first attempt at any kind of hydro. ive grown weed in dirt for a while but i expect this to be an interesting transition. For my first attempt i decided to keep it simple and go with 1 5gallon bubble bucket. Im using a home depot paint bucket, covered in aluminum tape to make light proof, with a 3" net pot placed in the lid. Im using grodan rockwool and hydroton. i will also be using the complete line of technaflora nutrients. I placed the seed in my rockwool 2 days ago and it has sprouted already. The taproot is out and i expect to have it in my bucket by the end of the week. At that point i will start half strenght nutes and begin full strength nutes the following week. this is a bag seed grow the first time out. I just want to experiment with nutes and ph and what not before i delv into some expensive fem seeds. if all goes well i hope to use this tent for growing special strains like haze and og kush that cant be grown in large quantities easily. Anyways im hoping for lots of help here. ive done my research but im still expecting some difficulties. ill be counting on all the hydro tycoons we have here in the city. thanks in advance for your help. here are a couple pics of my setup be sure to chime in with your thoughts.
Lookin' good man, this is gonna be a nice little grow. You don't need to use any nutrients until the plant has 3-4 leafsets, so for the next few weeks, you should only feed the seedling plain water. Looks like a good setup, what type of lighting will you be using?
im doing under 100watts of cfl. heres my big question though. i tried this once and like a week through i put the plant into the bucket and the leaves quickly turned a dying yellow color. im positive i almost lost the plant but transplanted it to soil and saved it. i thought it was because i hadnt started it on nutes... is this possible or did something else try to kill my girl? also does the plain water need to be ph adjusted or can i just run it from the tap?
Your seedling probably didn't die from lack of nutrients, though it's hard to say, having not seen it myself. The common killer of small seedlings in rockwool is overwatering. Where you place the RW cube in the hydroton, in relation to the water level in your bubble bucket is very important until you have a decent root structure hanging into the water. If the water level is too high, the RW never dries out, and the seedling will die similar death to the one that you described. You want the RW at about a 1/2" above the waterline, this will keep the RW moist, but not wet, because it recieves moisture from the hydroton. You can also give it a little shotglass of water if you really think it needs it. The best way I have found to place RW in the correct spot is to determine where you want your water level to be before you put any hydroton in the net pot. Put the bubble bucket together with everything but the seedling and the hydroton, so that you can see the water level through the net pot. Fill the bucket with water until the water level comes to about 1/2" above the bottom of the net pot. then, hold the seedling about 1/2" above the water, and with the other hand, slowly add hydroton until the RW cube is supported, and then fill the pot. Mark that water level, and you'll know exactly what level to keep the water at until you have roots hanging down.. You can use tap water, but tap tends to have a high pH, so you might need to adjust... adjusting pH of plain water can be a real pain in the ass because of it's lack of buffers. Fluctuations and mis-readings happen fairly often. If you use distilled or RO water, the pH should not need adjustment. Pictures are your best way to help us help you, so keep 'em coming... Hope that makes sense man, I sure can ramble sometimes.
+rep unclenugs! i have asked these questions in tons of forums, multiple ways and thats the best explanation ive ever got. i think you might be right about the RW overwatering though. It looked like the leaves had been stricken by serious deficiency but that could have been caused by the flood i gave it lol. Thankfully the bucket is already set up so im taking your advice and adjusting the marker for my water level. Besides that still waiting for the seed to come up. I can see that its sprouted and hopefully it should be completely up in another 24hrs. Then its into the bucket and off to the races.
Great to hear man, always glad to help. I know how hard it can be to find that info, I had to figure it out though trial and error, haha. Lookin' foreword to this one. You're gonna be blown away by how well these bubble buckets work.
Looks good man, im setting up a very similar room myself( converting a fullsize freezer) and using a BB too. My seeding is 2 weeks old right now so im pullin up a chair so i can have someone to compare to lol.! GL. hope all goes well.
Glad to have you here HPS! ive seen those freezers on youtube but ill for sure be checking it out. Me and the girlfriend are always looking for creative ways to hide the grow and a refrig grow just sounds fun. Looking forward to sharing those noobie errors with ya lol.
ok so the seedling is finally up and looking great. Im misting with water once a day and once a day also with b-1 green from technaflora. i do this with all my seedlings and it works great. Heres my question though: I noticed the taproot has already grown through the rockwool about an inch and is sandwiched between the tray and RW. Should i be concerned? It doesnt look damaging or anything but should i put it in the bucket now, or wait for more roots to appear?
So the seedling is in the bucket and o far so good. The hydroton is absorbing water but the RW is just a light damp. I think its on the right track this time. New concern though. My digital ph meter came today so no more strips but im concerned about the ph of my bucket. The tap here is about 7.6 but my bucket is at 8.2. Is this too high? and why is ph higher once its in the bucket? im too cheap to keep this grow going on distilled water, so could i add like 10-20% nutes so that i could have a buffer to ph treat the water? i doubt it would nute burn it but just curious
Well i think things are ok but im not sure... the plant hasnt really grown any in the last couple days. i thought it may have died but i checked the rw to see if the roots had grown any and they had... not a ton but a little. it was at this time that i also noticed the rw was rather dry. i figured that may have been why it was growing so slow. i poured 3ml of water on the RW and well see what happens. still looking for an answer to the question above... i checked the stuff on the GH site and some other nute info and it says you can give seedlings light feedings. anyways heres a couple pics of the rw in the hyrdroton and a better pic of the setup.
I wouldn't add any nutes yet, you can adjust the pH of your tap water with little pH down, just add it slowly in measured increments and expect it to drift over the next couple days. Balancing pH is a bit of an art, you'll get the hang of it eventually. Just keep in mind that RO water is only 25-35 cents per gallon at most of those vending machines outside of grocery stores, and you'd only need it until the plant was ready for nutrients, when you could easily adjust the pH of your tap water. good call on giving the rockwool some water, keep an eye on it.
right on nugs. i think itll be ok. i raised the water level so that it is actually touching the hydroton now. before i still had a half inch space so it wasnt all the way there. things seem ok now though. hoping this stays smooth.
well i woke up today to find out that the seedling had died. it fizzled out like the last one and just kinda stopped growing. i pulled the cube up only to find that there was no new root growth either. kind of a bummer. i was excited about about the buckets but theyre a little more daunting than i originally thought they would be. gonna throw the buckets in storage and use this space to grow out some really nice sativas. my gf is always bugging for "trippier" weed(i like indicas so i try to avoid Sativas) so im thinking about throwing some G13 haze or chronic haze in there and letting em get big. anyways though thank for the help guys and goodluck with all your own grows as well.
3rd times a charm, man. You should try a clone in the bubble bucket, they can be a bit less temperamental than seedlings to start. Hate to see ya give up without even getting any roots in the water.
o im far from giving up. for some reason though they always seem to fizzle as soon as they hit the bucket. i think next time im gonna try an ebb and flow though i just dont have the cash right now to build one. thanks again though nugs... epic fail but i did learn some shit and hopefully that much closer to success next time.
